Festival:
The 24th Docaviv: Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival
Dates:
May 26-June 5
About:
This notable Israeli nonfiction event returns to its regular May berth with approximately 100 new and recent documentary features.
Among the offerings:
Israeli Competition:
1341 FRAMES OF LOVE AND WAR
Director: Ran Tal
An epic journey of self-doubt and questioning through the camera is revealed through an archive of over half a million negatives taken by Israel‘s most celebrated war photographer.
THE CAMERA OF DOCTOR MORRIS
Director: Itamar Alcalay, Meital Zvieli
Years after his death, the home movies of a British expatriate to Israel reveal an extraordinary family.
CHILDREN OF PEACE
Director: Maayan Schwartz
A look at the children who were brought up in a 1970s utopian social experiment where Palestinians and Israelis chose to live together in co-existence.
THE DEVIL’S CONFESSION: THE LOST EICHMANN TAPES
Director: Yariv Mozer
On the sixtieth anniversary of the Eichmann trial, original recordings of an interview conducted by Nazi journalist Sassen with Eichmann in Argentina are revealed.
H2: THE OCCUPATION LAB
Director: Idit Avrahami, Noam Sheizaf
Segregated, highly surveilled, heavily filmed, and intensely guarded: a single neighborhood in Hebron tells the 54 years of military occupation.
MINI DV
Director: Shauly Melamed
Four LGBTQ adults re-encounter the home video footage they shot of themselves as youths: Shauly explored his homosexuality, Tom faced his gender identity, Betty filmed her friends and lovers, and Rumia discovered her roots in drag.
International Competition:
ATLANTIDE
Director: Yuri Ancarani
On the edges of the Venice Lagoon, adrenaline runs high as boat engines roar and outsider Daniele is determined to break speed records.
CHILDREN OF THE MIST
Director: Diem Ha Le
School has given 12-year-old Di a glimpse of the outside world and its progressive values, but in her insular community, in the misty mountains of North Vietnam, the tradition of child bride kidnapping is still alive.
FRAGILE MEMORY
Director: Igor Ivanko
As Alzheimer’s chips away at the mind of renowned Odesa-based cinematographer Leonid Burlaka, his filmmaker grandson pores over damaged old film rolls he has found, in an attempt to get more closely acquainted with both his grandfather and Soviet-era Ukrainian films.
Beyond the Screen Competition:
40 STEPS
Director: Gad Aisen
Co-Director: Manor Birman
An orthodox school in southern Tel Aviv is divided in half for a new secular elementary school creating a shared playground in which both schools must coexist, while the identity of different communities are put to the test.
THE PROSTITUTION MONOLOGUES
Director: Tamar Yarom
Seven women openly share their experiences of life in prostitution – from the initial lure, through trauma, and their struggle to survive.
Depth of Field Competition:
EVERYMAN AND I
Director: Katharina Pethke
In the thick of a rocky, heady relationship that runs hot and cold, the filmmaker tries to understand the man before her, an actor who erases his whole being for every part he plays.
FIGURE-GROUND
Director: Tal Elkayam
A compilation of YouTube material brings together two parallel worlds—the beach of Tel Aviv and the hills of the West Bank—in a raw, associatively edited, unorthodox portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
GODS OF MEXICO
Director: Helmut Dosantos
On salt flats and in ore mines, on steep cliffs and in desert pits, Mexican laborers work with their hands, with simple tools, painstakingly and slowly—far slower than the pace of modern life.
Panorama:
THE BABY DADDY
Directors: Adi Rabinovici, Yair Cymerman
Ari Nagel, a serial sperm donor and a father to more than a 100 children, jeopardizes his relationship with his eldest son and his Jewish religious family.
CLOSED CIRCUIT
Director: Tal Inbar
Security camera footage capturing two men in suits shooting at a frightened crowd in a Tel Aviv café offers insight into the complex Israeli reality and the lasting trauma caused to those involved.
THE ELECTED – CHAPTER 1
Director: Efrat Shalom Danon
Past and current female members of Knesset talk about their experiences, revealing the complex status of women in government and in society.
FACING MONSTERS
Director: Bentley Dean
The bigger, taller, and more unpredictable the waves are, the stronger Aussie surfer Kerby Brown’s burning urge to conquer them.
LOS ZULUAGAS
Director: Flavia Montini
25 years after his family fled Colombia, Juan Camilo returns and, using diaries and home videos, tries to understand his parents’ lives as guerrilla fighters.
PENELOPE, MY LOVE
Director: Claire Doyon
When her daughter was diagnosed as autistic, her mother, armed with a camera, filmed every twist and turn on her long journey toward accepting her daughter—and herself.
Arts and Culture:
INFINITY ACCORDING TO FLORIAN
Director: Oleksiy Radynski
At the heart of Kyiv, 90-year-old Florian Yuriev’s architectural magnum opus is in danger, but he refuses to back down or to stop provoking the mainstream.
LOVING HIGHSMITH
Director: Eva Vitija
Her thrilling best-sellers were adapted into hit films, but in her previously unpublished private journals, Patricia Highsmith is revealed as a woman who had to keep her love for women out of sight and away from her family.
THE OTHER CITY
Director: Livi Kessel
Livi, a photography student, documents her four closest friends – young artists in downtown Haifa – as the instability in their lives raises questions about success, self-destruction, and the price of their dreams.
WORDS THAT REMAIN
Director: Nurith Aviv
Six people recall the languages that cradled their childhoods – Judeo-Spanish or Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Persian – now-dying languages that have left traces that still affect those who heard them as children.
Music:
LICHT – STOCKHAUSEN’S LEGACY
Director: Oeke Hoogendijk
As pioneering musicians prepare to do the impossible and stage Karlheinz Stockhausen’s opera cycle LICHT—an ambitious, brilliant, and megalomaniacal musical production that nobody has ever performed fully—the vibrant universe of the genius composer is revealed, showing him to be every bit as eccentric, brilliant, and passionate as his opera.
LOST ANGELES – DOCUMENTARY MUSICAL
Director: Golan Rise, Sharon Yaish
In Kiryat Malachi, Los Angeles’ twin city, 60-year-old Yosef Hurriye, with mounting debts and looming local elections, decides it’s time to fight for the town and his life.
LOVE, DEUTSCHMARKS AND DEATH
Director: Cem Kaya
An exploration of the Turkish music scene in Germany that emerged in the 1960s out of migrant workers’ homesickness and disappointment.
Student Competition:
EVERYBODY KNOWS JACK
Director: Orr Weisberg
A film student on the autism spectrum documents the bond between a father and his stepson, who suffers from a degenerative disease.
PURPLE BELLS
Director: Daniel Romanayev
Danni, a son of immigrants to Israel from Moscow who was ashamed of his family his whole life, reimagines their memories through animation.
what (not) to doc 