The Student Film Competition
Pushkin's Pants
Dir: Lev Brodinsky, Steve Tisch School of Film and Television – TAU, Fiction, 2019, 10 min
In the 1990s trailer parks were erected in Israel, housing immigrants from both Ethiopia and the former USSR. The culture gaps, crowded conditions and hardships caused tensions between the immigrants. Avraham (9), an immigrant from Ethiopia, lives in such a site, and has taught himself Russian to improve his chances of survival. He happens to meet his neighbor, Marina, an immigrant from Russia, and she invites him over to eat at her trailer. She is stunned by his Russian and compares him to Alexander Pushkin, Russia's national poet, whose grandfather was from Ethiopia and was considered dark-skinned himself. Avraham had never heard of him.
Avraham and Marina come from distant parts of the world, but discover that they share more than they thought. The makeshift trailer site gives hope and arouses fraternity among those who view themselves as migrants.
Silence of the Desert
Dir: Alon Levy, Steve Tisch School of Film and Television – TAU, Fiction, 2020, 20 min
In the heart of the wilderness, trapped in a brutal reality of human trafficking, two protagonists from different worlds realize that only if they join forces can they change their fate.
Trust your God
Dir: Gal Cohen, Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology, and The Arts, 2020, Fiction, 14 min
Yehonatan joins a conversion therapy workshop for religious men with the intent to be straight – "normal" – again. During the workshop he meets himself and his inner conflicts through his roommate, Netanel, who is the complete opposite.
Prologue
Dir: Shiri Kuban, Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, 2020,Fiction, 9 min
Nour leaves her front door, meaning to leave her partner Arik. When Arik notices her leaving, he does all he can to stop her.
Tunnels
Dir: Guy Adout, WIZO Academic Center, Haifa, 2020, Fiction, 5 min
A former soldier recalls experiences from the operation in Gaza. Tunnels is a short animated film based on true events from the 2014 Operation Protective Edge, and it highlights the dissociation of soldiers from the experiences of war through the use of elements from computer games, which are an inseparable part of their generation's life.
Home
Dir: Smadar Epshtein Palgi, Sapir Academic College, 2020, Documentary, 28 min
Two women try to clean a filthy home in which one of them resides with 12 cats. The cleaning process reveals the tenant's hardships – mental, financial and physical. The one's desire to help the other clashes with the latter's inability to deal with her own neglect. The two lay out differing world-views and the coping with the oppressive grime is accompanied by thought-provoking dialogues between the tenant and her friend, the filmmaker, who comes to help. The dialogue is at times a sort of interview, attempting to track down the roots of the neglect, at times a negotiation about objects to be kept or thrown out, and at times a conflict between hardship and intervention, between awareness and denial, between obsessive need and complete release. And as the dirt is removed, like a Sisyphean process, a new awareness seeps in.
Faith
Dir: Yahav Winner, Minshar School of Arts, 2020, Fiction, 13 min
Yassir is an asylum-seeker from Sudan who lives with his family in south Tel Aviv. After a fight with his wife he is forced to leave the house, and now his main goal is to regain the love of his daughter. He picks her up from school and they walk together through the streets of Tel Aviv.
Neurim
Dir: Shaylee Atary, Steve Tisch School of Film and Television – TAU, 2020, Fiction, 30 min
A strange and sassy relationship develops between Or, a 30year-old woman paralyzed in her lower body following an accident, and Shir, the new physiotherapist at her kibbutz. The touch of his hands awakens dormant parts inside her and brings an air of desire into her small mother's house, where she has been convalescing for a year now.
Listening In
Dir: Omer Sterenberg, Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, Fiction, 2019, 11 min
A young soldier in the intelligence corps listens to the conversations of a gay Palestinian couple. The relationship between the two men draws the soldier in and forces him to confront his own sexual identity, but when his feelings clash with the requirements of the job he is forced to make tough decisions.
Simhona
Dir: Batel Kaniel and Shira Billig, Ma'ale – Uri Elitzur School of Film and Television, 2020, Documentary, , 23 min
In 1954 Simhona was taken from her parents, new immigrants to Israel from Iran, to be treated for a skin rash. Her parents were informed that she had passed away and been buried in their absence. Due to their hardships, they did not investigate. Lately, following the opening of the archives in the kidnapped Yemeni children affair, her brother Eli (77) develops a suspicion that perhaps Simhona was abducted, and he sets out to search for her along with his daughter.
One Two home
Dir: Gili Shani, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, Fiction, 2020, 4.5 min
The protagonist of the film is a child of divorced parents whose home fell apart. Her memories are exposed in a sea of sand grains. A combination of stop-motion animated sand and a collage from the archive of old photo archive, weave the different stories of her parents and opening an honest and sensitive discourse about the lack of a stable home, relationships and parenthood.
Utopia
Dir: Sophia Soloduha, WIZO Academic Center, Fiction, Haifa, 2020, 4 min
Shai is a girl with a vivid imagination, who creates an enchanted forest for herself to escape the security threats to her life in Israel. In the woods she finds a box that causes her to have flashbacks from reality. The imaginary forest begins to vanish with an invasion of three foreign aircrafts, and she wakes up in the middle of a rocket attack beside her mother, who is having a severe panic attack. She gets out of the shelter with a determined look in her eyes and stands in front of the advancing rocket. She concentrates, her hand outstretched, the rocket about to hit her. Suddenly the entire street becomes the enchanted forest, and this time her mother is in it with her. Finally, Shai is in her comfort zone. She and her mother are safe.
Summer Shade
Dir: Shira Haimovici, London Film School, 2020, Fiction, 15 min
Gal, a mischievous nature girl of 13, finds herself alone for the first time at the spring near her grandmother's home. A young girl's magical time in the woods, which seems at first pleasant and mesmerizing, turns in a flash into an Israeli rite of passage. Four young Ultra-Orthodox men who come to bathe drive Gal away, seeing her as a threatening woman. A girl becomes a woman against her will on a hot Israeli summer day.
Fight Back
Dir: Loren Trabelsi, Ma'ale – Uri Elitzur School of Film and Television, Fiction, 2019, 19 min
Rotem, an adolescent girl, prepares for an important Thai Boxing competition. She begins to date Shachar, a boy from the group, but after a short while decides that he is standing in her way. She decides to end the relationship, but Shachar doesn't take it appropriately.
Soft Grass
Dir: Shadi Habib Allah, Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, 2020, Fiction, 15 min
Hussein awakens to the day of his father's funeral. Hussein's pet fawn, Vidian, is acting out wildly in the home's inner court. Hussein calms her down and leaves for his parents' home. The Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem is on lockdown following a terror attack, and Israeli soldiers are searching for the perpetrator. The noises from the fawn draw them to break into Hussein's home, and the animal flees. Hussein's concern for the fawn increases as the funeral procession progresses, and he sneaks away to search for her, and really to find solace for his soul.
Licorice
Dir: Hillel Klein, Ma'ale, the Uri Elitzur School for Cinema and Television, Fiction, 2020, 12 min
Yosef, an intellectually-challenged orphan boy, seeks empathy in a world that doesn't know how to accept him.
The Distance to You
Dir: Rivka Fertig, Ma'ale – Uri Elitzur School of Film and Television, Fiction, 2020, 14 min
A glimpse into the inner lives of four Ultra-Orthodox artists: the conflicts, the dreams, and the risky tightrope walk between God and art, and between the Haredi sector and the inner desire.
A tale of search and journey to an inner truth, however hard to stomach.