The New Fund for Cinema and TV

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.

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.

Very few details are known about Rabbi Shalom Shabazi, but 400 years after his death, Shabazi is as popular as ever and is considered one of the greatest Yemenite poets. The film takes the audience on a journey through the extraordinary life of one of the greatest Hebrew writers.

Imagine that you are a renowned chemist, who invents a legal psychoactive drug. Imagine that you push it as a start-up and become the most notorious drug baron of the 21st century. Imagine that all of this is true. How to make a documentary out of this unbelievable story? Let’s animate it, give it rhythm and take the audience on a journey where the high-tech world and academia meet the fauna of the Haifa underworld.

A Hasidic True Crime Story. An astounding 300.000 people attended the funeral of Rabbi Schik - an admired American ultra-Orthodox Rabbi. Unbeknownst to his followers, Rabbi Schik was also the leader of a transatlantic crime organization which established an extreme and segregated cult spanning between Brooklyn and Israel. While female members were forced into underage marriages and sustained sexual assaults, the money was flowing into the Rabbi’s own pockets. This corrupt culture prevailed for decades, with no one ever daring to expose the painful truth – until now.

To all, it appeared as if I grew up in a normal home: a house on a Moshav, with sprinklers watering the yard. My Mother was a kindergarten teacher, and my Father was a farmer. In the nineties, my parents decided to give up their orchards. Instead, they opened a business selling gasoline to other farmers. The business grew, but it was poorly run from our home between the baskets of laundry, piles of cash being counted next to pots of couscous. Everything smelled of gasoline. My Mother pleaded with my Father to sell the business, but he ignored her. Not long afterward, she became ill, and the business collapsed. Our family fell apart. What caused the destruction of my charismatic family that everyone always thought was so perfect?

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?

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.

The story of the Druze community in the Golan Heights—conquered in 1967 and annexed by Israel in 1981—is told through two characters from Majdal Shams: 19-year-old Aya, who dreams of joining Israel’s national hockey team and is willing to accept Israeli citizenship to achieve her goal, and her older uncle Ayoub, a journalist and farmer who identifies as Syrian and firmly rejects Israeli citizenship. Filmed overthe course of three years, the documentary explores the deep identity crisis of a lost community striving for a peaceful life on its ancestral land while caught in the grip of a turbulent fate.

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.

Rabbi David Buzaglo was the greatest Hebrew liturgical poet of the twentieth century. Born in Morocco in 1903, his literary output had a major impact on a community of hundreds of thousands of people. From his prolific period in the Diaspora to the years he spent in a ruptured Israel, Buzaglo's poetry initiated an abrupt shift in Sephardic liturgical writing, but it also served as a vital link between the modern era and a tradition that dates back to Spanish Jewry's Golden Age. But Buzaglo was more than just a great poet. The actions he took at seminal moments in history had a critical impact in shaping the identity of Maghreb Jews. This film is an intimate look at Buzaglo's life and career, from its roots in the rich tradition of Hebrew poetry in Morocco through the liturgical revolution in Israel.

Twenty years after shooting the film Souvenirs, Shahar lives in Amsterdam, raising two Dutch-Yemeni children, just like the grandchildren his late father had longed for. He runs the best falafel food truck in town, employing refugees from all over the world. His son Salie, is a 14-year-old adolescent with a sharp tongue and plenty of criticism. Embarrassed by Shahar’s market job, he wants his father to open a respectable restaurant. Shahar dreams of a restaurant too, but cares more about the refugees he would need to let go. The solution comes from Salie, who starts to grasp what truly matters in life.

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.

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.

Despite accusations of institutionalized systemic Nazism by the Russian government and its allies, Ukraine’s diverse Jewish community remains among the country’s most passionate patriots. Alex Osmolovsky’s illuminating documentary follows Ukrainian Jews from various backgrounds as they reflect on their relationship to their homeland and share how their lives have changed since the Russian invasion. With scenes of soldiers in camouflage kippahs and a bris performed on the front lines, the film paints a striking portrait of one of the world's most resilient Jewish communities as it navigates its way through more than three years of war.

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.

Oren Levi is struggling to find his place in the world. Born in Guatemala and adopted by an Israeli couple as a baby, Oren had a troublesome childhood despite all the love and support of his family. Misdiagnosed with autism and mental illness, put into a psychiatric ward after a suicide attempt, he found it even harder to connect with the world that labelled him as “not normal” in many different ways. One day, armed with a simple video camera, Oren embarks on a journey to meet his biological parents and things begin to change. Tomer Heymann’s film tells a compelling story of a young man coming-of-age and discovering his true self among different landscapes, cultures and languages.

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.

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.

In this documentary mosaic of a continued social disintegration, seven filmmakers bring to the screen protagonists and stories that live in an abyss of despair, in the chasm between those who have and those who do not. An old man rummaging for food in bins; a father who cannot give water to his infant daughter because he’s been cut off; an overcrowded ER that cannot cope under the pressure; a man who nearly buys an expensive Lexus and may yet decide to buy a Mercedes; a realtor in a well-fenced villa; and a mother sitting in a small crowded house with a hungry baby in one arm and a canister of gas in the other.