The subject of faith has always been tightly intertwined with Israeli cinema, and in recent years some of the most thought-provoking films on the subject have originated there. For a nation torn between secular modernization and maintaining an ancient ethnoreligious…
Movie Review: The Wedding Plan
The Wedding Plan is a film wherein the protagonist has an extended philosophical conversation with her seamstress – a character who appears in only one scene – about God, His will, faith, and religion. It’s a film whose closing shot reflects its opening shot in a breathtaking way. It’s a film that consistently defied my expectations and predictions. It’s a film that has the plot of a 90s romantic comedy but the weight and assurance of a Coen Brothers’ classic. As far as I’m concerned, Burshtein has cemented a status not only as one of Israel’s most important auteurs but as a filmmaker international audiences should have their eyes on.
Movie Review: Is That You?
It’s difficult to tell where the whimsy ends and the wistfulness begins in Dani Menkin’s Is That You?, an Israeli road trip movie set in the United States. After being fired from his movie projectionist job in Israel, the 60-year…
Movie Review: ‘Jeruzalem’
I only ask three things from found footage films. 1) Give a plausible reason why the main character would be recording the events of the film. 2) Allow a plausible explanation for how the footage was recovered. 3) If you…
Movie Review – ‘Rock in the Red Zone’
The first thing you need to know about Laura Bialis’ Rock in the Red Zone: it isn’t really about the music scene in Sderot, Israel—a town less than a mile from the Gaza Strip baring the twin monikers of the…
Movie Review – ‘Censored Voices’
Ten days after the conclusion of the Six-Day War wherein Israel stunned the world by simultaneously defeating the combined military strength of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, writer Amos Oz and editor Avraham Shapira gathered together newly forged veterans of the…