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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 34 movies from Riva Film
Eastern Cape, South Africa. A lonely factory worker, Xolani, takes time off his job to assist during an annual Xhosa circumcision initiation into manhood. In a remote mountain camp that is off limits to women, young men, painted in white ochre, recuperate as they learn the masculine codes of their culture. In this environment of machismo and aggression, Xolani cares for a defiant initiate from Johannesburg, Kwanda, who quickly learns Xolani's best kept secret, that he is in love with another man.
Apr 2017
An eccentric multimillionaire signs an agreement to have his life ended. While selecting his coffin he meets a young woman who has signed up for the same arrangement. Trouble ensues when the couple falls in love and wishes to get out of the contract.
May 2015
Moshe and Tami are a couple, Moshe is in his fifties and Tami is in her early twenties. They live together in a cruel and violent relationship, from which Tami seems unable to set herself free. Tami and Moshe are father and daughter...
Aug 2014
Oct 2018
Salma Zidane, a widow, lives simply from her grove of lemon trees in the West Bank's occupied territory. The Israeli defence minister and his wife move next door, forcing the Secret Service to order the trees' removal for security. The stoic Salma seeks assistance from the Palestinian Authority, Israeli army, and a young attorney, Ziad Daud, who takes the case. In this allegory, does David stand a chance against Goliath?
Feb 2008
The trial story of Viviane Amsalem's five year fight to obtain her divorce in front of the only legal authority competent for divorce cases in Israel, the Rabbinical Court.
Jun 2014
A young Arab is caught between cultures as he is sent to a prestigious Jewish boarding school in Israel in the 1980s.
Jul 2014
A middle-aged Orthodox Jew, Aaron, living and working in Jerusalem with his wife and children, meets a homeless 19-year-old student. Aaron offers to give Ezri work as his assistant at his family's butcher shop. The two men grow close and their attraction becomes sexual. Aaron must now confront his own sexuality, his feelings for Ezri, and his obligations to his family and faith.
May 2009
In Gaza, 60-year-old fisherman Issa has been secretly in love with Siham, a widow who works at the market. One day, the discovery of an ancient phallic statue of Apollo in his fishing net changes his life. With newfound confidence, he decides to approach Siham but problems arise when authorities become involved with this mysterious and potent treasure.
Jun 2021
Ada is an American journalist of Polish origin. She has just moved to Hamburg with her partner and is struggling to find her way in the new reality. One day, a mysterious package arrives at the editorial office where she works.
Sep 2024
In 2007, Yahya works at his friend Osama’s falafel shop in Gaza, which doubles as a drug dealing front. His entanglement leads him to witness a terrible crime. A couple years later, Gaza’s Ministry of Culture randomly chooses Yahya to star in a TV series that highlights martyrs and heroes of the resistance. As conflict simmers in the distance, Yahya unexpectedly receives real weapons, heightening the stakes as the show provides him with an opportunity to confront the perpetrator of the offense that changed his life.
Jun 2025
Based on the turbulent life story of the poet Yona Wallach. The film focuses on the period in which she was just a young village girl, a war orphan, clawing her way through the world of Hebrew poetry. With the outbreak consciousness and transition from the village to the big city, Jonah, which examines the limits of herself and wants to know everything, experienced a mental breakdown. Spirit of the times, Jonah was treated LSD. The struggle to return to write and occupy its own place heavy charge her, but earns her immortality on the Hebrew poetry shelf.
Dec 2014
A wellness hotel in a small German castle specializes in well-off couples, offering a wide range of services, including one some partners feel trapped into : relational therapy. It's truth time, for some liberating, forcing others to face their secrets of dysfunctional relationship.
Nov 2016
While handing out food at a charity organization, Laura, Evîn and Julia unexpectedly cross paths. Laura, a released prisoner, defends Evîn, a Kurdish woman, when she is racially insulted by a man waiting in line. Eventually the situation gets out of hand.
Jan 2026
The lonely bank-employee Phillip follows a strict pattern of somewhat compulsive actions keeping his encounters with strangers to a minimum. When his home one day is robbed of all content and he later meets the enchanting blind cellist Lina, he finds, however, he needs to start improvising and taking chances.
Jan 2009
Naomi, an Israeli Mossad agent, is sent to Germany to protect Mona, a Lebanese informant recovering from plastic surgery to assume her new identity. Together for two weeks in a quiet apartment in Hamburg, the relationship that develops between the two women is soon exposed to the threat of terror that is engulfing the world today. In this game of deception, beliefs are questioned, choices are made, and their fate takes a surprising turn.
Oct 2017
Deniz and her friends, who have been apart for the summer, have much to tell each other. While adults are busy with their professional lives, Deniz and her friends are still confused about their university plans. Through the worries of their daily routines, they make plans for the future, yet the challenges of teenage years/adolescence are burdensome. Deniz desires a life that is different than the ideals of her friends. A song nobody has heard of, a hopeless love, solitude. A different world, but where exactly?
Oct 2013
25-year-old Sibel lives with her father and sister in a secluded village in the mountains of Turkey’s Black Sea region. Sibel is a mute, but she communicates by using the ancestral whistled language of the area.
Jan 2019
Shattering the patriarchal concept that a true crime duo requires a man, Bonnie and Bonnie showcases the development of true friendship between two strong and independent women, determined to make their mark on the world.
Oct 2019
A noir thriller told from the point of view of a femme fatale, who falls for the detective in charge of a murder case.
Mar 2012