Imagine that you are a renowned chemist, who invents a legal psychoactive drug. Imagine that you push it as a start-up and become the most notorious drug baron of the 21st century. Imagine that all of this is true. How to make a documentary out of this unbelievable story? Let’s animate it, give it rhythm and take the audience on a journey where the high-tech world and academia meet the fauna of the Haifa underworld.
Raised in an orthodox home, Amos Dov Silver dreams of becoming Prime Minister. But when the State continues to shun him, he soon finds unexpected solace in the velvety smoke of Marijuana. Spreading his new Torah, he establishes an online community using a mobile app called "TeleGrass" that turns into the largest marketplace for drugs in Israel, raising Silver to Messiah status. Through exclusive footage of Silver, his family and his partners’ investigations, as well as secretly filmed footage of Silver in the Ukrainian prison, a polarizing portrayal of the man charged with heading a crime organization emerges. Champion of the people, or a lost soul corrupted by power?
Yonatan abandons the army in an attempt to reunite with his ex-boyfriend. After it turns into a failure, he finds himself alone in Tel Aviv, without a place to sleep. Broken and confused, he goes on a wild night's journey looking for consolation.
Four ultra-orthodox women who dared to yell “we won’t be silenced!”.Through their revolution, we manage to make our way inside a closed off community with a very clear code of silence in regards to sexuality in general, and sexual assault in particular. Following these events, the worlds of each of these women has been overturned, whether because she herself has been a victim of sexual assault or a woman in one of their close circles.
A cinematic investigative journey to a story hidden by the IDF for 50 years - a brutal massacre of 17 Israeli prisoners by Syrian soldiers in two tragic events on the Golan Heights front. An event shrouded in secrets and lies that is a metaphor for the first days of that terrible war that caught the State of Israel in its weakness and disgrace .
Yet again, Batya is forced by her sister Leah to confront their father’s mental illness. Dealing with her sister's demands to hospitalize him, Batya has to realize what is the best decision for the whole family.
A rap opera that takes place in the world of film noir - on a stormy night Sarah Bennett arrives at Detective Joe's investigation office. She asks him to find her missing sister. Drunk Joe initially waves her off but something about Sarah touches him and he finally agrees to investigate the case, knowing that nothing good will come of it. Jack, Joe's partner, doesn't like it and feels something is wrong. Joe realizes that behind the whole affair is the city's biggest criminal that no one wants to mess with, and on top of all that, Sarah disappears. Now Joe must solve the problem. All dialogues are rhymed and sung on the beat.
A phone call wakes me up early in the morning. My older brother got into trouble. Again. After another entanglement, I realize that I can no longer ignore the problems that follow him around, and which seem to be taking over my life. I use the camera to get answers from my family and a wall of silence melts away. Through a mix of amusing, intense, and eye-opening encounters, I begin to understand how relations in my family, especially with my mother, were influenced by an unspoken expression. Strange Birds is an intimate film that reveals an unspoken story about special parenting and the children who grow up in its shadow.
Oren Levi is struggling to find his place in the world. Born in Guatemala and adopted by an Israeli couple as a baby, Oren had a troublesome childhood despite all the love and support of his family. Misdiagnosed with autism and mental illness, put into a psychiatric ward after a suicide attempt, he found it even harder to connect with the world that labelled him as “not normal” in many different ways. One day, armed with a simple video camera, Oren embarks on a journey to meet his biological parents and things begin to change. Tomer Heymann’s film tells a compelling story of a young man coming-of-age and discovering his true self among different landscapes, cultures and languages.
At 75, Geula broke up with her husband Arik, 77. A contractor built a wall that divided their house in two. This intimate, funny, painful and surprising family journey reveals why it took them 55 years to break up.
The film brings for the first time the story of the Israeli radio station Beit Shidir. With the establishment of the State of Israel and the immigration of Jews from Arab countries, the radio station was an active site for producing intelligence and political warfare against Arab countries in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. From the outside, it was a radio station that broadcast news and songs in Arabic, whereas in practice, the broadcasts were used by the administration for propaganda, psychological warfare, changing public opinion in Arab countries, and activating agents through codes implanted within the broadcasts. Soon the broadcasts became the most terrifying threat that agitated the rulers of the Arab world, and the broadcasters in it were named by the competing radio stations ‘The Israel Broadcasting Corporation’s Propaganda Orchestra’.
How does the world look through the eyes of a 6-year-old child? Summer Nights offers a window into a child’s world: his fears, his desires, his way of thinking. It is a journey into the subconscious of an innocent and ingenuous child, as he falls asleep and drifts into the depths of his own mind.
The story of Yamin Masika, the “Don Quixote" of Israeli cinema — a director, social activist, and cultural entrepreneur who played a pivotal role in transforming Mizrahi culture from the margins to the mainstream. In the 1990s, after repeated rejections by the Israeli film industry, Masika began creating underground, low-budget films and music videos featuring Mizrahi artists like Avi Bitter, Tamir Gal, Moshe Cohen, Sarit Hadad, and Zehava Ben. Though ridiculed and dismissed by the establishment, these films resonated deeply with audiences who had been excluded from mainstream media for decades, leading to a cultural revolution.
In a Jaffa bra shop's fitting room, women's love-hate affair with their bosom buddies unfolds. As each heroine struggles to find the perfect bra, she bares not just her chest, but her soul, sharing tales of triumph, tribulation, and the occasional wardrobe malfunction. For breasts aren't just fleshy accessories-they're the protagonists of our life's epic. From the awkward moment they first break out, to the sobering reality checks of mammograms, our relationship with our "girls" is a bouncy roller-coaster of ups and downs because life, much like a poorly fitted bra, is full of surprises. This film unravels the mystery, myth, and full support between women and their breasts. It's a story that's written on our bodies, in every curve, contour, and stretch mark.
A documentary about the life, work and death of Inbal Perlmutter. A local rock legend, different sex symbol and a trailblazing woman who was mysteriously killed in a car crash at the age of 27.
In 1999, after a 23-year absence, gifted musician Ahuva Ozeri is planning a comeback. She's recording a new album - The Bells are Ringing. Ahuva, considered the queen of the Middle Eastern music, sits at home and makes a living as a cook at a meat restaurant. She hopes to break out again with the new album. But at the end of the recording, she is diagnosed with throat cancer and undergoes surgery where her vocal cords are cut. She loses her voice forever, but the album is very successful. It managed to cross audiences and becomes a consensus. This film is based on rare never before-seen materials, sketching her life's course.
In this documentary mosaic of a continued social disintegration, seven filmmakers bring to the screen protagonists and stories that live in an abyss of despair, in the chasm between those who have and those who do not. An old man rummaging for food in bins; a father who cannot give water to his infant daughter because he’s been cut off; an overcrowded ER that cannot cope under the pressure; a man who nearly buys an expensive Lexus and may yet decide to buy a Mercedes; a realtor in a well-fenced villa; and a mother sitting in a small crowded house with a hungry baby in one arm and a canister of gas in the other.
A stoner teenager before army recruitment and his retired military career father are forced to stay alone at home for the first time when the mother goes on vacation. The tension between them leads to an explosion - But not the kind that they expected.
Michal Ben Horin reveals her childhood secrets. Through a personal film archive in which she holds private conversations with the world’s most psychopathic criminals, including Charles Manson, Richard Ramirez – The Night Stalker who murdered 18 people, Lynette Fromme – a member of the Manson family and the woman who tried to assassinate President Ford, and more. Michal asks them questions she couldn’t ask her stepfather, Motke Keddar, a Mossad agent who murdered his informant and became known as prisoner X, but for Michal he is the man who hurt her, and the biggest psychopath of all. The filmmaker embarks on a 30 -year journey in which she wants to understand the dangerous madness behind the stamp of genius and logical proficiency of her stepfather.
The World Chess Championship is a juicy battle, rife with passion, power and money. Boris Gelfand has spent his entire life getting ready for this moment; he was raised to become a champion since the age of six. His father devoted all his life to cultivating Boris' talent while obsessively documenting the process. The photo albums tell the father's story as much as that of the son, revealing a simple truth about a man living his own dreams through his son under the Soviet regime. Can any child, given fine Soviet education, become a genius? And is becoming a genius worth the price?
