Festival's Films
Emad Burnat from the Palestinian Bil’in receives his first video camera on the occasion of the birth of his son Jibril in 2005. At that time, Israel decides to build the Separation Barrier on the land of his village. The villagers oppose that decision and their weekly protests with international and Israeli peace activists come to symbol nonviolent resistance.
Israeli Premiere! The film follows the daily lives of four girls in out-of-home care. Separated from their parents, they struggle for recognition, self-love, independence and security, constantly longing to go back home. For two years, the film traces their ups and downs, providing an authentic glimpse into the daily lives of girls at risk in a protected environment, wishing for a “nearly normal” life
An inward odyssey through Israel, 2005—undertaken in the footsteps of the celebrated French filmmaker Chris Marker and his internationally acclaimed film Description of a Struggle (1960). In that work, Marker contemplates fragments of everyday life in a twelve-year-old nation, wandering its landscapes with exquisite observational sensitivity and a distinctly poetic cinematic language.
A forensic investigation into the Israeli military’s attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system and healthcare workers, as well as the treatment of detained healthcare workers both inside Gaza and in Israeli prisons. The film examines evidence of widespread destruction across the territory’s medical infrastructure, where all 36 main hospitals have reportedly been damaged or destroyed
Israeli Premiere! Winner of the Best Actress Award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, the film follows Renuka, a Muslim woman on the run from the police after killing a police officer in a Delhi brothel. She changes her identity to conceal her past and finds refuge in a community of sex workers in southern India, where she meets 17-year-old Devika, who is destined to a similar future
Israeli Premiere! This captivating Persian-language thriller, winner of the Orizzonti Extra Audience Award at the Venice International Film Festival, 2024, unfolds the story of retired dance teacher Tarlan, who witnesses the murder of her friend Rana by her husband, a senior official in the Iranian regime.
A naïve documentary filmmaker, astride a battered scooter, armed with a modest stage draped in purple cloth and three cameras, embarks on a journey in search of the true and absolute voice of his people. His quixotic mission—an intimate allusion to Dziga Vertov’s The Man with the Movie Camera (1929)—revives the early dream of cinema as an instrument of pure revelation, determined to bring truth itself to the screen.
Israeli Premiere! Jenny, a young woman addicted to crystal meth, finds out she is pregnant and in danger of imprisonment. The state appoints a peer recovery doula for her, Marla, whom Jenny finds difficult to trust. Gradually, a tender relationship is woven between them, as Jenny decides to move up her sentence to ensure a place in a prison nursery, and thus keep her future child
The disappearance of the Yemenite, Mizrahi, and Balkan children remains one of the most painful and unresolved chapters in Israeli history. The fate of over 1,000 infants and children remains disputed to this day. In this film, director Israela Shaer-Meoded attempts to trace the path of her missing aunt through historical testimonies from nurses, caregivers, and doctors.
Israeli Premiere! When COVID-19 breaks out, three scientists find themselves at the center of a media and political attack, having spent decades researching the relation between bats and viruses. Instead of leading the medical discourse, they are forced to cope with unfounded rumors and false accusations
I Cried in Gaza is a groundbreaking film confronting the severe, hidden mental toll of modern warfare. For the first time since 1948, women were extensively deployed to the front lines of the Gaza War (AKA “Iron Swords War”); war, with over 4,000 having since sought mental health treatment. The film plunges into the intimate, subjective experiences of seven female warriors who fought in active combat in Gaza and Lebanon.
Israeli Premiere! The Helsinki Effect is a documentary essay based on rare archival materials. The film reveals how the innocuous Helsinki Conference convened in 1975 to promote cooperation between East and West during the Cold War weakened the Iron Curtain and inspired peace movements – how a seemingly minor event became a historical turning point
A film adaptation of the novel by David Grossman, which won the actor Tuncel Kurtiz the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival. At the center of the film are three individuals, each of whom sheds light from a different angle on the sheer futility and dangers that lie in Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank.
Israeli Premiere! The film follows members of Combatants for Peace – a joint organization of Israelis and Palestinians who have sought to turn their backs on violence. It documents their daily struggles to remain committed to peace in the face of personal challenges, social pressures and sheer hatred, particularly after the outbreak of the ongoing Israel-Gaza war
Israeli Premiere! An award-winning documentary on students and teachers in Ukrainian schools, living under constant threat. The film highlights the difficulty of maintaining a school routine, forming friendships and living a normal life during wartime. It is a tribute to the Ukrainians’ resilience and tenacity in the face of an impossible reality.
Israeli Premiere! An intimate documentary that follows famous Russian journalist Zhanna Agalakova and her rebellious daughter in a journey across Russia on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine. For four summers and one winter, they engage with memories and secrets and discover the conflicts between loyalty, propaganda and patriotism. A poetic journey of self-discovery, mother-daughter relations and personal struggle in a society on the brink of war
Israeli Premiere!
Bye is a poetic and political film about two young acters rehearsing Romeo and Juliet in a quiet park, as reality starts invading their world. The Shakespearean love story becomes a mirror image of present-day Israel: toxic political discourse, police violence, and a looming dictatorship.
Israeli Premiere! Shen, a woman in her sixties, faces an unexpected jolt. Her young daughter Zuer has travelled from Taipei to New York with her lesbian partner to start a family with fertility treatments. They die in a car accident and leave behind a frozen embryo – and a fateful decision that must be made. Shen is forced to redefine motherhood as she is torn between her options: donate, destroy, or raise
Israeli Premiere! Fifteen years after their trailblazing documentary Food Inc., codirectors Robert Kenner and Melissa Robledo revisit the global food system. The film reveals unbridled corporate monopolism, and presents and industry that is as efficient as it is injurious to its employees. Together with sharp criticism, the film also offers a horizon of change: innovative farmers, activists and legislators fighting for a future of fair, wholesome and sustainable food
In the midst of a war that exacted a heavy price in human lives following Oct 7, two groups of Arab and Jewish youth – one in Ramle, the other in Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam – met in order to make films together as part of educational filmmaking workshops initiated by Solidarity Human Rights Film Festival with the support the European Union and MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, and in partnership with Young Voices and Sadaka Reut.
On his restless journey to heal from the noise that has shattered the fragile balance of his life, the film’s protagonist–director, discovers—through the eyes and voice of his wife, who tells his story from her own vantage—that sensitivity to noise is a deeply personal terrain: one soul may lie sleepless through the slow dripping of water, while another remains deaf to the shriek of a car alarm below the window.
Israeli Premiere! Director Laura Coppens ventures on a personal journey following her family’s heritage through the stories of her grandfather, a former doctor who lived under Nazi rule and later in East Germany. Their in-depth conversations reveal inner conflicts, moral choices and the ongoing impact of dictatorships on personal identity and memory.
Israeli Premiere! A political drama set against the Lebanese Civil War. George, an idealist French theater director accepts his sick friend’s request and arrives in Beirut in 1982 to stage Antigone with actors from diverse ethnic groups. In this highly charged junction of art and reality, the protagonist quickly finds out that politics invades the stage, and how hard it is to keep theater and war apart.
Israeli Premiere! This film won the Silver Bear Jury Award at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival. It is about a 9-year-old girl who is able to communicate with animals. The adults around her take advantage of her unique gift to offer consultation meetings where she “communicates” with animals for pay. Whether the magic is real or not, their service is considered real by the people who use it
Israeli Premiere!
Twelve-year-old Adi dreams of a huge whale floating in the sky, until it reaches a gas rig – and the world turns around. Through her eyes, we experience the protest of her father and the Homeland Guards, who have led the largest environmental campaign in Israel – to expose the truth behind the gas rigs, the falsehood of “green energy”, and the machinations of politics and capital.
Israeli Premiere!
On Friday morning, September 13, 2024, three women heard knocks on their doors. All were active in the protest against Yuli Edelstein, then Chairperson of the Israeli Parliament’s all-important Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Police officers awaited them, and as they testified, “they came to take me”.
Israeli Premiere! Valentina is a young woman living in the Sicilian village of Niscemi, overshadowed by a huge American military communications base (MOUS). She cares for her sick father and suffers from existential asphyxiation. As her physical and mental stress intensifies, she ventures on a journey of independence
Israeli Premiere! The film follows the daily lives of four girls in out-of-home care. Separated from their parents, they struggle for recognition, self-love, independence and security, constantly longing to go back home. For two years, the film traces their ups and downs, providing an authentic glimpse into the daily lives of girls at risk in a protected environment, wishing for a “nearly normal” life
Israeli Premiere! An award-winning documentary on students and teachers in Ukrainian schools, living under constant threat. The film highlights the difficulty of maintaining a school routine, forming friendships and living a normal life during wartime. It is a tribute to the Ukrainians’ resilience and tenacity in the face of an impossible reality.
Israeli Premiere! Valentina is a young woman living in the Sicilian village of Niscemi, overshadowed by a huge American military communications base (MOUS). She cares for her sick father and suffers from existential asphyxiation. As her physical and mental stress intensifies, she ventures on a journey of independence
Israeli Premiere! An intimate documentary that follows famous Russian journalist Zhanna Agalakova and her rebellious daughter in a journey across Russia on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine. For four summers and one winter, they engage with memories and secrets and discover the conflicts between loyalty, propaganda and patriotism. A poetic journey of self-discovery, mother-daughter relations and personal struggle in a society on the brink of war
Israeli Premiere! When COVID-19 breaks out, three scientists find themselves at the center of a media and political attack, having spent decades researching the relation between bats and viruses. Instead of leading the medical discourse, they are forced to cope with unfounded rumors and false accusations
Israeli Premiere! Shen, a woman in her sixties, faces an unexpected jolt. Her young daughter Zuer has travelled from Taipei to New York with her lesbian partner to start a family with fertility treatments. They die in a car accident and leave behind a frozen embryo – and a fateful decision that must be made. Shen is forced to redefine motherhood as she is torn between her options: donate, destroy, or raise
A forensic investigation into the Israeli military’s attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system and healthcare workers, as well as the treatment of detained healthcare workers both inside Gaza and in Israeli prisons. The film examines evidence of widespread destruction across the territory’s medical infrastructure, where all 36 main hospitals have reportedly been damaged or destroyed
Israeli Premiere! A political drama set against the Lebanese Civil War. George, an idealist French theater director accepts his sick friend’s request and arrives in Beirut in 1982 to stage Antigone with actors from diverse ethnic groups. In this highly charged junction of art and reality, the protagonist quickly finds out that politics invades the stage, and how hard it is to keep theater and war apart.
Israeli Premiere! This film won the Silver Bear Jury Award at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival. It is about a 9-year-old girl who is able to communicate with animals. The adults around her take advantage of her unique gift to offer consultation meetings where she “communicates” with animals for pay. Whether the magic is real or not, their service is considered real by the people who use it
Israeli Premiere! The film follows members of Combatants for Peace – a joint organization of Israelis and Palestinians who have sought to turn their backs on violence. It documents their daily struggles to remain committed to peace in the face of personal challenges, social pressures and sheer hatred, particularly after the outbreak of the ongoing Israel-Gaza war
Israeli Premiere! Jenny, a young woman addicted to crystal meth, finds out she is pregnant and in danger of imprisonment. The state appoints a peer recovery doula for her, Marla, whom Jenny finds difficult to trust. Gradually, a tender relationship is woven between them, as Jenny decides to move up her sentence to ensure a place in a prison nursery, and thus keep her future child
Israeli Premiere! The film follows the daily lives of four girls in out-of-home care. Separated from their parents, they struggle for recognition, self-love, independence and security, constantly longing to go back home. For two years, the film traces their ups and downs, providing an authentic glimpse into the daily lives of girls at risk in a protected environment, wishing for a “nearly normal” life
Israeli Premiere! Director Laura Coppens ventures on a personal journey following her family’s heritage through the stories of her grandfather, a former doctor who lived under Nazi rule and later in East Germany. Their in-depth conversations reveal inner conflicts, moral choices and the ongoing impact of dictatorships on personal identity and memory.
Israeli Premiere! Winner of the Best Actress Award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, the film follows Renuka, a Muslim woman on the run from the police after killing a police officer in a Delhi brothel. She changes her identity to conceal her past and finds refuge in a community of sex workers in southern India, where she meets 17-year-old Devika, who is destined to a similar future
Israeli Premiere! An award-winning documentary on students and teachers in Ukrainian schools, living under constant threat. The film highlights the difficulty of maintaining a school routine, forming friendships and living a normal life during wartime. It is a tribute to the Ukrainians’ resilience and tenacity in the face of an impossible reality.
Israeli Premiere! Fifteen years after their trailblazing documentary Food Inc., codirectors Robert Kenner and Melissa Robledo revisit the global food system. The film reveals unbridled corporate monopolism, and presents and industry that is as efficient as it is injurious to its employees. Together with sharp criticism, the film also offers a horizon of change: innovative farmers, activists and legislators fighting for a future of fair, wholesome and sustainable food
Israeli Premiere! The Helsinki Effect is a documentary essay based on rare archival materials. The film reveals how the innocuous Helsinki Conference convened in 1975 to promote cooperation between East and West during the Cold War weakened the Iron Curtain and inspired peace movements – how a seemingly minor event became a historical turning point
Israeli Premiere! This captivating Persian-language thriller, winner of the Orizzonti Extra Audience Award at the Venice International Film Festival, 2024, unfolds the story of retired dance teacher Tarlan, who witnesses the murder of her friend Rana by her husband, a senior official in the Iranian regime.
Israeli Premiere! Valentina is a young woman living in the Sicilian village of Niscemi, overshadowed by a huge American military communications base (MOUS). She cares for her sick father and suffers from existential asphyxiation. As her physical and mental stress intensifies, she ventures on a journey of independence
Israeli Premiere! This film won the Silver Bear Jury Award at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival. It is about a 9-year-old girl who is able to communicate with animals. The adults around her take advantage of her unique gift to offer consultation meetings where she “communicates” with animals for pay. Whether the magic is real or not, their service is considered real by the people who use it
Israeli Premiere! Winner of the Best Actress Award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, the film follows Renuka, a Muslim woman on the run from the police after killing a police officer in a Delhi brothel. She changes her identity to conceal her past and finds refuge in a community of sex workers in southern India, where she meets 17-year-old Devika, who is destined to a similar future
Israeli Premiere! A political drama set against the Lebanese Civil War. George, an idealist French theater director accepts his sick friend’s request and arrives in Beirut in 1982 to stage Antigone with actors from diverse ethnic groups. In this highly charged junction of art and reality, the protagonist quickly finds out that politics invades the stage, and how hard it is to keep theater and war apart.
Israeli Premiere! Jenny, a young woman addicted to crystal meth, finds out she is pregnant and in danger of imprisonment. The state appoints a peer recovery doula for her, Marla, whom Jenny finds difficult to trust. Gradually, a tender relationship is woven between them, as Jenny decides to move up her sentence to ensure a place in a prison nursery, and thus keep her future child
Emad Burnat from the Palestinian Bil’in receives his first video camera on the occasion of the birth of his son Jibril in 2005. At that time, Israel decides to build the Separation Barrier on the land of his village. The villagers oppose that decision and their weekly protests with international and Israeli peace activists come to symbol nonviolent resistance.
An inward odyssey through Israel, 2005—undertaken in the footsteps of the celebrated French filmmaker Chris Marker and his internationally acclaimed film Description of a Struggle (1960). In that work, Marker contemplates fragments of everyday life in a twelve-year-old nation, wandering its landscapes with exquisite observational sensitivity and a distinctly poetic cinematic language.
Israeli Premiere!
On Friday morning, September 13, 2024, three women heard knocks on their doors. All were active in the protest against Yuli Edelstein, then Chairperson of the Israeli Parliament’s all-important Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Police officers awaited them, and as they testified, “they came to take me”.
I Cried in Gaza is a groundbreaking film confronting the severe, hidden mental toll of modern warfare. For the first time since 1948, women were extensively deployed to the front lines of the Gaza War (AKA “Iron Swords War”); war, with over 4,000 having since sought mental health treatment. The film plunges into the intimate, subjective experiences of seven female warriors who fought in active combat in Gaza and Lebanon.
A film adaptation of the novel by David Grossman, which won the actor Tuncel Kurtiz the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival. At the center of the film are three individuals, each of whom sheds light from a different angle on the sheer futility and dangers that lie in Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank.
A naïve documentary filmmaker, astride a battered scooter, armed with a modest stage draped in purple cloth and three cameras, embarks on a journey in search of the true and absolute voice of his people. His quixotic mission—an intimate allusion to Dziga Vertov’s The Man with the Movie Camera (1929)—revives the early dream of cinema as an instrument of pure revelation, determined to bring truth itself to the screen.
Israeli Premiere!
Bye is a poetic and political film about two young acters rehearsing Romeo and Juliet in a quiet park, as reality starts invading their world. The Shakespearean love story becomes a mirror image of present-day Israel: toxic political discourse, police violence, and a looming dictatorship.
On his restless journey to heal from the noise that has shattered the fragile balance of his life, the film’s protagonist–director, discovers—through the eyes and voice of his wife, who tells his story from her own vantage—that sensitivity to noise is a deeply personal terrain: one soul may lie sleepless through the slow dripping of water, while another remains deaf to the shriek of a car alarm below the window.
Israeli Premiere!
Twelve-year-old Adi dreams of a huge whale floating in the sky, until it reaches a gas rig – and the world turns around. Through her eyes, we experience the protest of her father and the Homeland Guards, who have led the largest environmental campaign in Israel – to expose the truth behind the gas rigs, the falsehood of “green energy”, and the machinations of politics and capital.
The disappearance of the Yemenite, Mizrahi, and Balkan children remains one of the most painful and unresolved chapters in Israeli history. The fate of over 1,000 infants and children remains disputed to this day. In this film, director Israela Shaer-Meoded attempts to trace the path of her missing aunt through historical testimonies from nurses, caregivers, and doctors.
Israeli Premiere!
Bye is a poetic and political film about two young acters rehearsing Romeo and Juliet in a quiet park, as reality starts invading their world. The Shakespearean love story becomes a mirror image of present-day Israel: toxic political discourse, police violence, and a looming dictatorship.
Israeli Premiere!
Twelve-year-old Adi dreams of a huge whale floating in the sky, until it reaches a gas rig – and the world turns around. Through her eyes, we experience the protest of her father and the Homeland Guards, who have led the largest environmental campaign in Israel – to expose the truth behind the gas rigs, the falsehood of “green energy”, and the machinations of politics and capital.
Israeli Premiere!
On Friday morning, September 13, 2024, three women heard knocks on their doors. All were active in the protest against Yuli Edelstein, then Chairperson of the Israeli Parliament’s all-important Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Police officers awaited them, and as they testified, “they came to take me”.
Israeli Premiere! Director Laura Coppens ventures on a personal journey following her family’s heritage through the stories of her grandfather, a former doctor who lived under Nazi rule and later in East Germany. Their in-depth conversations reveal inner conflicts, moral choices and the ongoing impact of dictatorships on personal identity and memory.
In the midst of a war that exacted a heavy price in human lives following Oct 7, two groups of Arab and Jewish youth – one in Ramle, the other in Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam – met in order to make films together as part of educational filmmaking workshops initiated by Solidarity Human Rights Film Festival with the support the European Union and MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, and in partnership with Young Voices and Sadaka Reut.
Between Bullet and lens, is a gripping 27-minute documentary that delves into the harrowing experiences of journalists and photojournalists who covered the brutal Hamas attack on southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023. Through raw and uncensored testimonies, these frontline witnesses recount the chaos, fear, and moral dilemmas they faced documenting the worst massacre of Israeli civilians.
In the heart of Jerusalem, there is a secondhand clothing store run by Rasi (26), a former ultra-Orthodox woman. Among the daily arrivals of clothes and items, a colorful group of characters begins to gather. Each is waiting for something — an answer, a touch, a glimmer of hope. At the height of Hanukkah, just before the darkness outside takes over, Rasi tries to spark a true light — one that will bring everyone, if only for a moment, back to a sense of home
Shiri and Lior, a young couple eagerly awaiting the birth of their first child, find themselves in the midst of an emotional storm. Due to the security situation, the delivery room has been moved to the lower floor of the hospital. Just before they are discharged home, the head of the maternity ward reveals a disturbing suspicion: there is a chance that their baby was switched with another couple’s baby.
אלי, 62, מפקד צוות לשעבר בגולני, מתמודד עם שדה הקרב שבתוכו: טראומה שלא מרפה ממלחמת לבנון הראשונה. לילה שקט בבית החולים שבו התאשפז נקטע בפתאומיות כשקול מסוק נוחת משגר אותו חזרה לזיכרונות מהקרב. אשליות מטשטשות את הגבול שבין עבר להווה, חושפות טעות הרסנית שמלווה אותו מאז ומפגש אחד מכריע עם בנו הקצין גורם לו להודות במה שעשה.
Winner of the Best Film Award in the Israeli Competition at the Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival 2024. Eight-year-old Noam pretends to be dead on an abandoned roof. When his older sister forces him to return home Noam discovers a secret that makes her life miserable. Faced with their shared unhappiness, Noam will try to comfort her.
Based on a true story: Two gunmen, Khaled and Salim, arrive at a Tel Aviv coffee shop to carry out a terrorist attack. Both are dressed in suits so as not to arouse suspicion. After Khaled gives Salim the final instructions, they both begin shooting at the innocent bystanders.
On a nearby street, a woman and her policeman husband (Yael and Itay) encounter Salim who has fled the scene. While Itay rushes to the crime scene, Yael stays with Salim, and invites him to her apartment without knowing his identity.
Yair returns home from military service in the West Bank. He invites Yaara to his family’s bourgeois Jerusalem home. They play piano and open a bottle of wine. What seems to start as peaceful weekend together, is interrupted by a story about an innocent family whose house he invaded on the previous evening.
An anti-war film examining the nature of political power and its destructive character. The film offers a different perspective on the calamity surrounding us, using abstraction of found footage combined with selected excerpts from the philosopher Simone Weil's essay 'The Iliad, or The Poem of Force'.
Moti spends his days riding trains, listening to strangers' stories without revealing who he is. The son of an Arab father and a Jewish mother from Eilat, he finds solace in the ever-changing passengers ,living out his right to be no one, or maybe anyone. But everything shifts when Yael, who knew him long ago, boards the train and asks for his companionship. The film explores freedom, the desire to love everything, and the beauty of simply existing.
Roni (30) is alone at the maternity ward, several hours after her painful and complicated first childbirth. She looks down to her baby and wants to get away from it.
Janan (25), a nurse intern enters the room. She was called to give Rony a shower. A task that appears to be more complex than she expected- a task that none of them wants to complete.
“Meir" is a heartwarming drama about a shoemaker who runs a family business with his two brothers. When the neighboring night club causes trouble for their shop, Meir's brothers want to sell the business to the club owners. Meir, however, refuses to let go of his family's legacy and does everything he can to prevent the deal from taking place. As tensions rise, Meir must navigate the complexities of family, tradition, and community to keep his life's work alive.
