Israel
Away from professional stadiums, bright lights, and manicured fields, there’s another side of soccer. Tucked away on alleys, side streets, and concrete courts, people play in improvised games. Every country has a different word for it. In the United States, we call it “pick-up soccer.” In Trinidad, it’s “taking a sweat.” In England, it’s “having a kick-about.” In Brazil, the word is “pelada,” which literally means “naked”—the game stripped down to its core. It’s the version of the game played by anyone, anywhere—and it’s a window into lives all around the world. Pelada is a documentary following Luke and Gwendolyn, two former college soccer stars who didn’t quite make it to the pros. Not ready for it to be over, they take off, chasing the game. From prisoners in Bolivia to moonshine brewers in Kenya, from freestylers in China to women who play in hijab in Iran, Pelada is the story of the people who play.
When Eyal finishes the week of mourning for his late son, his wife urges him to return to their routine but instead he gets high with a young neighbor and sets out to discover that there are still things in his life worth living for.
Goldberg is short and thin. He wears glasses. He’s lonely. He’s a mediocre computer programmer that lives in Tel Aviv and spends most of his energy searching online for a girlfriend. His only friend is Audrey, his beloved female dog. Eisenberg is a thug. Tall, fat, approaching middle age and not completely sane. He spends his days slouching around Meir Park, harassing innocent bystanders and doing business with petty thieves and small-time criminals. Unfortunately the two cross paths, and Eisenberg decides that they should start hanging out. But something in his demeanor says that he wants to be much more than just friends…This is a story about random meetings with strangers that lead to anxiety and paranoia. About lonely people in the big city. About losing control.
A group of friends in a Tel Aviv suburb get together to watch Universong, a Eurovision-like television song contest. They gather to watch and are depressed by the lifelessness of the Israeli entry, a parody of many recent offerings, a flashy, grating song about “amour.” Realizing that Anat is distraught over the crisis in her marriage, they decide to compose a song to cheer her up. As a lark, they enters their cellphone video of it in next year’s contest, and it becomes Israel’s entry.
Doron, a security operative, who takes on one last mission: to capture, number 3 in the terrorist organization of Hezbollah, in Lebanon. With an elite force, Doron enters Lebanon to complete his last mission. Very soon he discovers that reality is not so simple, and that a new and unknown enemy is to be dealt with – and Hezbollah are the last thing on his mind. Doron has to deal with a ticking clock in the form of extensive I.D.F attack and a bloodthirsty enemy, Now that their enemy has changed its face, it’s up to him and his unit to wage a new war, a different war, to find an antidote, get back across the border, before the middle east conflict is changed forever.
A naive drifter runs away from his army father in hopes of making it on the car racing circuit. In Las Vegas, he meets a young scam artist, who develops a crush on him. He is then introduced to a whole gang led by a young hustler. The racer-to-be then gets a lesson in the wild side, getting involved in one situation after another. Patsy Kensit makes a cameo as another hustler and Daryl Hannah appears as the scam artist’s surrogate mom.
An American journalist is set up and fed false information after the Lebanon war.
Beauty Bites Beast aims to ‘normalize’ the idea of women’s self-defense – and by extension, kids’ self-defense – as a human need and right.
A young girl travels to Cairo to visit her father, and becomes unwillingly involved with a bizarre sadomasochistic cult led by the charismatic Paul Chevalier, who is a descendant of the Marquis de Sade.
Desperate for companionship, a lonely, young Palestinian-American man agrees to marry an Israeli woman in need of a Green Card, forcing them to re-examine their respective cultural and familial traditions.
A German girl travels to Israel to help people with disabilities, where she learns a lot about the role of her grandparents in WWII and meets a man who wants to move to Berlin.
Victor Perez was a Jewish boxer who became world flyweight champion in 1931 and 1932, but was transported to Auschwitz concentration camp when Paris fell to the Nazi s in 1943. While there he was forced into slave labour and made to participate in violent boxing matches for the amusement of the Nazi guards. Surviving Auschwitz tells Victors astonishing, harrowing, brutal and incredibly moving true story.
Bethlehem tells the story of the unlikely bond between Razi, an Israeli secret service officer, and his Palestinian informant Sanfur, the younger brother of a senior Palestinian militant. Razi recruited Sanfur when he was just 15, and developed a very close, almost fatherly relationship to him. Now 17, Sanfur tries to navigate between Razi’s demands and his loyalty to his brother, living a double life and lying to both men. Co-written by director Yuval Adler and Ali Waked—an Arab journalist who spent years in the West Bank—Bethlehem gives an unparalleled, moving and authentic portrait of the complex reality behind the news.
From the perspective of two Palestinian men who are preparing to perform a suicide attack in Israel, this is the first film to deal with the subject of suicide bombers.
Five broken cameras – and each one has a powerful tale to tell. Embedded in the bullet-ridden remains of digital technology is the story of Emad Burnat, a farmer from the Palestinian village of Bil’in, which famously chose nonviolent resistance when the Israeli army encroached upon its land to make room for Jewish colonists. Emad buys his first camera in 2005 to document the birth of his fourth son, Gibreel. Over the course of the film, he becomes the peaceful archivist of an escalating struggle as olive trees are bulldozed, lives are lost, and a wall is built to segregate burgeoning Israeli settlements.
The story of lion trophy hunters in Africa. KING OF BEASTS offers a close-up on the world of the controversial ‘sport” of lion hunting.
A musical drama set in small-town Iowa, SAINTS REST tells the story of two estranged sisters, who over the course of one summer, form a connection through their shared love of music, as they grieve the recent death of their mother.