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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 40 movies from The New Fund for Cinema and TV
Assi, a failing actor, returns from army reserve duty to his hometown in Southern Israel. While he dreams of becoming a successful theater actor in Tel Aviv, he teaches high-school drama acting classes by day, and acts in a small cabaret show in the local community center by night. An unexpected event makes him famous - as the public enemy number one. His new reality would force him to decide if he should lay low and conform, or use his theatrical skills to speak up about the corruption of society - as he juggles through the grand circus that is his life.
Feb 2025
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.
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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.
May 2024
When, in the late 1990s, Israeli student Teddy Katz exposed the massacre of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces in the village of Tantura, in May 1948, during the first Arab-Israeli war, he was initially praised for his pioneering work; but he was soon infamous and branded a traitor. Decades later, incendiary new evidence emerges that corroborates Teddy's findings.
Jan 2022
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?
May 2023
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.
Jul 2023
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.
Aug 2018
Anat Gov, one of the most influential playwrights in Israeli theatre, is preparing for her death. She asks Arik Kneller, an artists' agent, to be the executor of her will. Arik struggles to accept the humor and serenity with which she faces her upcoming end. Anat, consciously accepting her nearing end, wishes to leave a spiritual legacy: there can be a happy ending. Almost a decade after her death, her loved ones try to fill the void left by her words with their own. Through excerpts from her plays and footage of her family and political world, a new script is written: one in which the line between the play and reality is blurred.
Aug 2021
Omri reunites his family for a drive to the desert. Facing his camcorder, he'll ask them to recollect the drive and fatal car accident they had on the way to his Bar Mitzvah. An accident that led to his parent’s divorce.
Dec 2020
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.
Jul 2018
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.
Jul 2024
Although he spent most of his life fighting ethnic discrimination, Yosef Shiloach is best remembered by the public for his comedic roles in Bourekas films. Yet behind the clownish image that clung to him was a deep, complex, and courageous artist who sought to change Israeli reality. He met with Yasser Arafat in his office and fought for peace—actions that ultimately forced him to leave the country. Shiloach was also a prolific writer—of songs, poems, screenplays, and more. Through his writings and rare, personal footage filmed by his daughter, we gain insight into the inner world of a man who began supporting his family at age nine and became one of Israel’s greatest actors.
Jul 2025
In the small and historic suburb of Mazkeret Batya, two sarcastic, rebellious teenagers dream of escaping their boring reality with their rock band. But when their disloyal bandmate unexpectedly quits, the two embark on a surprising journey that challenges their intense friendship.
Jan 2025
Nora built a shelter in a rural village, where she lives with 500 fruit bats, a gang of turkeys all named Hertzel, a mayna bird named Itzik and her beloved dog Koper. Isolated from society, she is helping the bats and every other animal that crosses her path. She soon discovers that there is no shelter far enough or secluded enough to protect them from the pain, loss and love that life brings.
Jan 2023
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.
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’.
A chance encounter between Anna Yam, a photographer, to Eileen Nir, a homeless woman nicknamed 'Peraẖ', enlightens a mutual curiosity, and leads them both to go on an unconventional journey in the dark backyard of Tel Aviv.
May 2025
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?
Jun 2013
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.
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 .
Oct 2023