Israeli films explore themes of cultural diversity, family, estrangement, and romantic relationships

The 5th annual Boston Israeli Film festival participants demonstrated strong performances by notable filmmakers drawing from stories that connect us, cultural nuances, aside.

Beat the Sunday Scaries by diverting your attention to the films of the 5th annual Boston Israeli Film Festival.

The Melting Pot / Salad Bowl

One of the first things I came to understand when I made the leap from American Jewish tourist visiting Israel as a young adult to cultural competent by way of my Israeli husband initiating me into a more authentic version of Israeli culture in my early 30s, was that the slice of standard Eastern European jewish culture (known as Ashkenazi), I was exposed to as a child and into my 20s only reflected a fraction of the melting pot or salad bowl that is the Israeli jewish identity. I made another critical cultural discovery around the same time and that is that to understand Israeli culture is to fundamentally appreciate that family is paramount. The institution of marriage, progeny, and religion, by association to the context of family are common themes in Israeli film.

In Israel, there are Jews of many different ethnic backgrounds. Apart from Janglos or Jews from anglo countries, you have Jews from India, Africa, Middle East, South America, Central and Eastern Europe, and pretty much every corner and pocket of the Earth. Jewish people from different places also look very different. This was a revelation to my very pale and dark haired self and likely made for some wide eyed staring in younger days along with the question of how there are so many different type of Jews in the world.

Unsurprisingly, Israel is also the land of polyglots. At a single dinner, you may hear Russian, Hebrew, French, and English, spoken for example. There is a scene in one of the Boston Israeli Film Festival feature films, Valeria Is Getting Married, in which Valeria, a young Ukrainian mail-order bride by way of the internet, is sitting at a dinner table with her fiance, who speaks Hebrew and a little English; her sister who speaks English, Russian and Hebrew; and her brother-in-law, Michael, who speaks Hebrew and a little English. Her sister is speaking Hebrew to Valeria’s fiance and Valeria is listening to her brother-in-law translate in broken English. The intensity of the scene and its ability to convey the concept of a hot, and animated melting pot in action is something to behold.

This concept of the “melting pot” or “salad bowl” was one of the core principles from which Israel was founded:

Israel’s first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion envisioned what Israel could become, he thought of a “melting pot” – a country where Jews of all kinds, religious and secular, eastern and western, would come together and form a new, uniquely Israeli, identity.

Christina, Valeria’s sister, and Michael, her husband have brought Valeria over to marry Eitan, a guy who ordered her online and has talked to her a few times. Michael brokered the deal and is charging a fair share as part of the financial arrangement. Eitan seems sweet, if not a bit of a nebech, and not to anyone’s surprise, Valeria isn’t thinking this kind of life is the one she wants. He comes on a bit strong, as Michael berates him for. Christina doesn’t seem that happy and working in a nail salon with Katya and Christina doesn’t seem that desirable to Valeria, who’d rather bank on her own abilities to drive her destiny without the albatross of an Eitan.

Absence of…Love, Romantic or Otherwise

In Flora, another of the short films shown at the festival, director Yuval Naim, shows the intergenerational forces at play between a Sephardic (Jew of Spanish descent) mother, Flora (Irit Sheleg) and her adult daughter (Moran Rosenblatt) who has moved home after breaking up with her boyfriend, whom she was not in love with. Flora’s daughter’s influence in her daily life is more in noticing the absence of romantic love and what she wants to find again. The tension is in the neglected but beautiful Flora’s view of her own desirability and worth and her husband Raffi’s disregard for her as romantic partner. He doesn’t even spare her a look unless it’s to remind her to give him food or coffee. When she does herself up with a desire to ignite a passion between them, he’s clueless and doesn’t even notice her nice dress and styled hair and leaves the dinner table without so much as a compliment. While this is the relationship between Flora and Raffi, I suppose we can hope for more for their daughter.

In The Artist’s Daughter, Oil on Canvas, filmmaker, Margarita Linton, dedicates the film “For Aba, with acceptance.” The subject of the film and its creator, Rita, as her father calls her by way of an intimate and loving nickname, which turns out, holds no depth or clue as to the real nature of his sentiments towards her, is making a film about her aba (father), a respected artist, whose self-portraits are in an exhibit at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. While Rita has been estranged from her father for many years, (his choice more than hers), the exhibit is the catalyst for her acknowledgment of this whole in her life that is left there as a result of this fractured relationship. To repair the relationship will restore or regenerate this loss and Rita can be whole. Only, it’s not this simple. Her father thwarts all her attempts to meet with Rita and to sit down with her - to the point where she is asking everyone else in her life and who would have known her father about him. In the end, Rita takes matters into her own hands and hires an actor to play her father, giving her the ending she would want. Only through her father’s absence is Rita made whole again, but it’s her ingenuity and sensitivity that shines through in the final product of this film. It’s a must see.

Family Matters & Aba’s Love

Maya Yadlin’s portrayal of her family as subject in her shorts is a thing of chaotic, family dysfunctional love. And it’s effortless, funny, and entirely relatable. In Killing Ourselves, Maya embarks on a car ride with her mother, father and actress sister in search of a tree where she can film a scene she’s written for her father and sister. Maya is in film school and her family is generally acting in her films so there is nothing unique in this trip. Finally they stop in the desert on the side of the road after some jostling around in the car and yelling about where they should stop and how they’ve gotten lost. Once they are on location, the scene is being prepared between Maya’s father and her sister - only her father won’t turn his neck towards Maya’s sister just enough when she’s talking which makes Maya irate and her mother is hot and tired of holding the boom microphone. Everyone eventually ends up back in the car. In the next scene, despite aba’s protestations with Maya and his “insolent” daughters, he brags to the man passing by riding the camel (this is the desert, after all) that his daughter his a filmmaker and they are all acting in her film. He shows pride in his family.

Alexander & The Real Girl

Remember a few years ago the Ryan Gosling film about his relationship with a blow up doll? Ok, Deep Water by Yehonatan Valtser isn’t that. Where I tried to get cheeky in the title of this section in comparing it to that film, Lars and the Real Girl, is that in this film, we have Alex, a socially reclusive dude, who writes academic papers for other people and gets paid for it. While this feels ethically dubious, I suppose we’ll have ChatGPT putting Alex out of business eventually, anyways. The short centers around Alex’s writing of a paper on the artist Goya, for a girl named Mai. In the film, Alex is accustomed to being paid electronically and not having to deal face-to-face with his clients for payment or otherwise.

Courtesy of IsraeliFilms / Alex lying own in his apartment

This online and transactional relationship suits Alex’s psychosocial anxieties. When Mai doesn’t pay online, Alex is forced out of his apartment to collect payment from her place where they strike up a conversation and bond on a deeper level about Goya. Mai is seemingly more intelligent than his average customer and this appeals to Alex. Though at no point would I conjecture to say their relationship seems at all romantic, there’s a hint of Alex bonding with another human in a deeper way, which is something he probably doesn’t do so much. The interaction between the two escalates as the essay Alex writes for Mai gets positive attention from her professor and she is later interviewed for a magazine. Ahead of the interview, she ventures over to Alex’s apartment (for a crash course on Goya) where you can viscerally sense Alex’s discomfort in her finding him there and being intimately in his space. Without giving too much away, the short ends with a whimper and some sadness, but not a ton of regret.

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But wait! There’s more.

If you’re in the Boston area, be sure to check out upcoming films in person in West Newton and Brookline on Tuesday, 3/21 and Thursday, 3/23, respectively.

Virtual programming open to people living in the state of Massachusetts.

Buy tix.

In Theaters: March 21, 23

I Am Not / אני לא

Documentary, 2021, Israel/Guatemala, 96 min

English, Hebrew, Spanish with English subtitles

Tomer Heymann (Writer/Director)

A deeply emotional work from acclaimed filmmaker Tomer Heymann, “I Am Not” follows an outcast teenager on a life-changing journey to self-discovery. Oren was adopted from Guatemala as a baby by an Israeli family. In Israel, Oren struggled to find his place, frequently subject to ridicule because of his communication difficulties, and more than once was falsely diagnosed with mental illness. Armed with a small video camera, Oren begins to document his life, discovering his voice and freedom. With his Israeli parents’ blessing, they all set off for the country of his birth, hoping to find both his origins and his place in the world.

America / אמריקה

Fiction, 2022, Israel/Germany/Czech Republic. 122 min

English, Hebrew with English subtitles

Ofir Raul Graizer (Writer/Director/Co-Editor)

Eli (Michael Moshonov) is a former champion swimmer from Israel, now giving swimming lessons in Chicago. When he learns his estranged father has died, he dutifully returns to Tel Aviv to sort out his father’s affairs. There he reconnects with his childhood friend and former swimming partner Yotam (Ofri Biterman), who lives with his Ethiopian fiancée Iris (Oshrat Ingedashet). The two men have a palpable attraction, an attraction they are loathed to discuss in this lyrical and understated love triangle.

Virtual: March 26–29

Concerned Citizen / אזרח מודאג

Fiction, 2022, Israel, 82 min

Hebrew with English subtitles

Idan Haguel (Writer/Director)

Ben is an enlightened, politically-liberal gay man living happily with his partner Raz in a beautiful apartment south of Tel Aviv. When Ben plants a sapling on their block to help beautify their gentrifying neighborhood, the act sets off a cascade of events that ultimately lead to the brutal police beating and arrest of an Eritrean immigrant. Ben’s complicity and sense of guilt compel him to question his relationship with Raz, his place in society, and, ultimately, his identity.

Written and Directed by Ida Haguel, this naturalistic film offers a fresh take on issues of privilege, prejudice, and inequality.

Matchmaking / בחורים טובים

Fiction, 2022, Israel, 98 min

Hebrew, Yiddish with English subtitles

Erez Tadmor (Co-Writer, Director)

Moti Bernstein is the perfect “catch,” at least according to his ultra-Orthodox family and his two matchmakers, who send the young yeshiva student on a flurry of dates with eligible Ashkenazi women. But Moti only has eyes for his sister’s friend Nechama, who hails from a Moroccan Mizrahi family. Throwing caution—and taboo—to the wind, Moti moves to win the hand of his Sephardic love. A Haredi take on the Romeo and Juliet story, this romantic comedy is Israel’s biggest 2023 box office hit

The Narrow Bridge / גשר צר

Documentary, 2022, Australia, 76 min

Arabic, English, Hebrew with English subtitles

Esther Takac (Writer/Director/Producer)

Director Esther Takac has worked as a trauma psychologist with bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families in a Jerusalem hospital for nine years. In “The Narrow Bridge,” she profiles four individuals—two men and two women, from Israeli and Palestinian families—who have lost a child or parent in the prolonged conflict. Despite considerable political and social resistance, and in the face of unspeakable loss, Bushra, Rami, Meytal, and Bassam work to transform their grief into reconciliation, summoning untold courage to build bridges of friendship that might one day lead to peace. The film includes an inspiring appearance by Leonard Cohen.