The best cultural phenomenon out of Israel since “Fauda” has been released into the wilds of the Internet. “Maktub”, which first debuted at the 2017 Israel Film Festival, has at last made its way onto our screens. Now that Netflix is streaming the action-comedy, 45 million subscribers a day are welcome to delve into a…
Details of conflicts between Israel and its neighbors in the Middle East have filled the news, of course, for many grief-filled years. Less prominently discussed outside of Israel are conflicts between communities of Jews in Israel — for example, over methods of and approaches to religious observance. Emil Ben-Shimon’s dramatic comedy “The Women’s Balcony” explores…
LOS ANGELES (JTA) – Three films directed by Israelis took center stage in the film listings of the Los Angeles Times’ senior critic Kenneth Turan. In Hollywood few newspaper items are scrutinized more intensely than the film reviews and rankings in the Los Angeles Times, making Friday’s list a boon for the films and their directors. The top…
Over the weekend I finally got around to watching “Zero Motivation,” the 2014 IDF tragicomedy by Talia Lavie (interviewed here). The movie centers on female characters’ experiences doing administrative work as part of their mandatory military service, and has been aptly compared to “Office Space.” What most struck me about the movie, watching it as…
Hugging the port of Cannes on either side of the Grand Palais du Festival is Village International, a colony of national pavilions, each promoting their own homegrown fare. This year, for the very first time in the history of the festival, Israel set up its own pavilion, right alongside China’s, whose red flag waged vigorously…
It’s the 68th installment of the world’s most glamorous film festival, and thousands of filmmakers, actors, movie execs, journalists, tourists and adoring fans have descended on this small, surprisingly unremarkable town along the French Riviera, a town whose name is synonymous with cinema. Last Wednesday, the International Jury headed by the American directing duo The…
“Zero Motivation,” which won the best narrative feature award at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, is an IDF version of “M* A* S* H.” Apparently, not everyone in the Israeli military is a gung-ho paratrooper. They also serve who push pencils around in boring circles. In this film, two women stationed at a military base…
Eytan Fox’s latest film, “Cupcakes,” (“Bananot” in Hebrew, meaning bananas) will receive its U.K. gala premiere when it closes the 17th UK Jewish Film Festival on November 17, in London. A feel-good musical comedy about love, life and friendship, the movie is a significant shift away from the award winning writer-director’s previous works such as…
