Film catalogue (Israeli/Jewish side)

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• Palestinian/Arab/Iranian Film Catalogue
• Film Festival Intro
• Chapters

Here's the full list. Well, that's kind of underselling it by now. It started as a list, then became a list of lists, and now it's a list of lists with mini-articles for each list. Note, of course, that this series of lists is accompanied by an equally elaborate set of lists for all the Palestinian, Arab and Iranian films which I've included in the project as it's ballooned to the proportions that you see. It's noticeable that very few of the films on this list are from before the millenium..That is partly because it's quite hard, from where I am at least, to get hold of earlier Israeli films (unless they're preserved on YouTube or some similar place). It's also really noticeable that there was a massive maturing (in some quarters at least) of Israeli films post-millenium. 

This is absolutely not to say that there was before 2000 a complete absence of serious debate and soul-searching within Israeli culture about all the hard issues facing it. We see plenty of that in the literature headed up by the famous triumvirate of Israeli novelists: Amos Oz, AB Yehoshua and David Grossman. However, my general impression of Israeli films before 2000 is that they were often intended as goofy distractions from the seriously heavy shit all around them. I believe that that may well account for the fact that I didn't watch a single Israeli film until after the year 2000. We must also bear in mind that it was only after the post-millenial high tech boom that it would have been easy for Israelis to contemplate the production of sophisticated high-budget movies.

Israeli films about "normal" life

Biiiig quotation marks around "normal", because the word is laced with a certain amount of irony. Firstly, a film about entirely normal, mundane, everyday life is unlikely box office material, and secondly Israel is far from a normal, boring country like Switzerland or Norway (nothing against those countries - I'm just lazily picking a couple of stereotypically stable places). What I mean to say here by "normal" is, without diminishing their essential Israeli/Jewish character, that these are films which I can imagine to a greater or lesser extent being (re-)made in another, non-Israeli, non-Jewish context, with whatever necessary tweaks. One of them - The Kindergarten Teacher - was indeed repackaged four years later in the USA, and maybe there are others on this list which inspired films elsewhere.

This list includes films about life in the Israeli army, which is a very normal part of most people's life in Israel (although not all of them, and there's actually quite a lot to say about that). This is of course an alien concept in a country such as my own with a fully professional standing army. Not that Israel is the only country in the world with compulsory military service. Far from it - think of South Korea, Russia (shudder), and many others. Nonetheless, compulsory military service doesn't feel "normal" to North Americans and most Europeans (although that may be about to change, thanks to Vladimir Vladimirovich). I have two separate lists of films about Israel's wars and about the Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. The army-related films on this list are much more about Israeli society than about the wars and the Occupation, with the exception of The Bubble, which is also very very much about the Occupation.

• Hole in the Moon (Hor B'Levana- חור בלבנה) (1964)
• Sallah Shabati (סאלח שבתי) (1964)
• Hamsin (חמסין) (1982)
• The Song of the Siren (Shirat ha-Sirena - שירת הסירנה) (1994)
• Saint Clara (קלרה הקדושה) (1996)
• Operation Grandma (Mivtza Savta - מבצע סבתא) (1999)
• Late Marriage (Hatuna Me'ukheret - חתונה מאוחרת) (2001)
• Broken Wings (Knafayim Shvurot - כנפיים שבורות) (2002)

• Yossi & Jagger (יוסי וג'אגר) (2002)
• Turn Left at the End of the World (Sof ha-Olam Smola - סוף העולם שמאלה) (2004)
• Walk on Water (Lalekhet al Mayim - ללכת על המים) (2004)
• Promised Land (Ha-Aretz ha-Muvtakhat - הארץ המובטחת) (2004)
• Free Zone (2005)

• The Bubble (HaBuah - הבועה) (2006)
• Jellyfish (Meduzot - מדוזות) (2007)
• The Band's Visit (Bikur haTizmoret - ביקור התזמורת) (2007)
• A Matter of Size (Sippur Gadol - סיפור גדול) (2009)
• Footnote (He'arat Shulayim - הערת שוליים) (2011)
• Yossi (Ha-Sippur Shel Yossi - Yossi's Story - הסיפור של יוסי) (2011)
• Big Bad Wolves (Mi Mefakhed mehaZe'ev haRa - Who's afraid of the bad wolf - מי מפחד מהזאב הרע) (2013)

• Hunting Elephants (לצוד פילים) (2013)
• Zero Motivation (Efes bikhsei 'Enosh - Zero in human relations - אפס ביחסי אנוש) (2014)
• The Kindergarten Teacher (haGanenet - הגננת) (2014)
• Mr Gaga (2015)
• The Cakemaker (haOfeh miBerlin - The Baker from Berlin - האופה מברלין) (2016)
• Maktub (מכתוב) (2017)

Israeli films about Religious Communities and Minorities

In contrast to the previous list, I couldn't really envisage too many of these films being made or rehashed in Hollywood or elsewhere (admittedly one of them - Live and Become - was a French production with a Romanian director, but it's the exception). I guess it's just a fact that to understand what's going on in these films you maybe need to have at least a little bit of prior understanding of Jewish history and traditions, and some awareness of the kaleidoscope of Jewish identities. 

Most of the films are about the tensions within and between the Ashkenazi and Sephardi/Mizrahi communities, but the other outlier on the list is A Borrowed Identity, which adresses the cultural dilemmas concerning integration, faced by Arabs who grow up within Israeli-Jewish society.

• Kadosh (Holiness - קדוש) (1999)
• Ushpizin (The Sukkot Guests - האושפיזין) (2004)

• Live and Become (2005)
• Fill the Void (Lemale et ha'Khalal - למלא את החלל) (2012)
• God's Neighbours (haMashgikhim - The Watchers - המשגיחים) (2012)
• A Borrowed Identity (al-Arab al-Raqisun - العرب الراقصون ; Zehut She'ula - (זהות שאולה) (2014)
• Tikkun (תיקון) (2015)

• The Women's Balcony (Yismakh Khatani - My Son-in-Law Will be Happy - (ישמח חתני) (2016)
• Forever Pure - Football and Racism in Jerusalem (2016)
• Vivian #1 - To Take a Wife (veLakakhta Lekha Isha - ולקחת לך אישה) (2004)
• Vivian #2 - Shiv'a (Seven Days - שבעה) (2008)
• Vivian #3 - Gett. The Trial of Vivian Amsalem (Gett - haMishpat shel Vivian Amsalem - גט - המשפט של ויויאן אמסלם) (2014)

Films about War - Israeli-made, or seen from the Israeli viewpoint

All but one are made in Israel. I added the clarification about the Israeli "viewpoint" simply because one of them, the very recently made Golda, is in fact a US/UK production (albeit that the director, and several of the actors, apart from Helen Mirren in the lead role, are Israeli). I didn't actually think too much of Golda, to be honest (Helen Mirren with prosthetics - why???), and I feel the same way about at least a couple more of the films on this list. Ir seemed to me that some of them were made more for the sake of mythmaking than in order to ask serious questions about what I recently heard Thomas Friedman very neatly describing as nearly one hundred years of "war, timeout, war, timeout, war, timeout...." 

However, the trio of films in the middle of the list, namely Beaufort, Waltz With Bashir and Lebanon, are extraordinarily honest pieces of work, and all three of them ask profound existential questions about the endless war. Add to them Tantura, which is a documentary about a man who paid a very heavy price after asking too many of those questions for the liking of many of his compatriots. I've included Yossi & Jagger on this list, as well as on the list of "normal" films, because it has quite a lot to say about Israeli society besides being set in a war zone.

• Cup Final (Gmar Gavi'a - גמר גביע) (1991)
• Kippur (כיפור) (2000)

• Kedma (Forwards - קדמה) (2002)
• Yossi & Jagger (יוסי וג'אגר) (2002)
• Beaufort (בופור) (2007)
• Waltz with Bashir (Vals 'im Bashir - ואלס עם באשיר) (2008)
• Lebanon (2009)
• Image of Victory (Tmunat Nitzakhon - תמונת הניצחון) (2021)
• Tantura (الطنطورة) (2022)
• Golda (2023)

Films about the Occupation

With only a couple of exceptions that fall a bit short, these are all very hard-hitting works. Tough questions will be asked, obviously. As with Yossi & Jagger on the previous list, I've got Eytan Fox's The Bubble on this list, while also including it in the list of films about "normal" life, because it's the film that brings the Occupation "home" more sharply than any other that I've seen. Note that several of these are documentary films, and that some of them are publicly available on YouTube (just try the links to find out!)

• Time of Favour (haHesder - The Arrangement - ההסדר) (2000)
• True Stories - The Settlers (2000)
• The Syrian Bride (al-Arus al-Suriya - العروس السورية; HaKala HaSurit - הכלה הסורית) (2004)
• Campfire (Medurat ha-Shevet - מדורת השבט) (2004)
• The Bubble (HaBuah - הבועה) (2006)
• Disengagement (2007)

• Lemon Tree ('Etz Limon - עץ לימון ; Shajaret Leimoun - شجرة ليمون) (2008)
• The Gatekeepers (Shomrei haSaf - שומרי הסף) (2012)
• Rock the Casbah (רוק בקסבה) (2012)
• Bethlehem (בית לחם) (2013)
• The Settlers - Inside The Jewish settlements (2016)
• Foxtrot (2017)

• Red Cow (Para Aduma - פרה אדומה) (2018)
• What It’s Like to Grow Up in an Israeli Settlement (2019)
• Incitement (Yemim Nora'im - Terrible Days - ימים נוראים) (2019)
• Advocate - A Lawyer without Borders (2020)
• Til Kingdom Come - Trump Faith And Money (2020)
• Abu Omar (أبو عمر ; אבו אומאר) (2021)

Diaspora Jewish films

Some of these films, for example Disobedience and Menashe, complement the list of films about religious communities within Israel, and the two films with Baghdad in the title shed light on issues of Sephardi and Mizrahi identity in the Jewish State. Of course not all of them are about religion, but more about Jewish identity in the Diaspora. Thankfully, some of them offer a little light relief from the horror and the darkness of the films in the two lists immediately above and below.

• Leon The Pig Farmer (1992)
• Everything Is Illuminated (2005)
• Arranged (2007)
• A Serious Man (2009)
• The Infidel (2010)
• Farewell Baghdad (The Dove Flyer - Mafti'ah haYonim - מפריח היונים : Muṭayr al-Ḥammām - مطير الحمام) (2013)

• Norman (2016)
• Remember Baghdad (2016)
• Menashe (מנשה) (2017)
• The Meyerowitz Stories (2017)
• Disobedience (2017)
• The Vigil (2019)
• The Offering (2023)

Films about the Sho'ah / Holocaust

As I already wrote about in my introductory post, I'm only including Holocaust films which got all the way under my skin. There were a lot of films made in the nineties and noughties which got a lot of hype, but which missed the mark in my opinion, so I'm not including Schindler's List, The Pianist, Life is Beautiful, among others. Obviously you can include them if you want. It's a very very personal choice. Not all of the films on this list are about the Holocaust itself. Three of them are about the echos of those events, which of course still resonate in the madness of today's Middle East. Walk On Water is the THIRD Eytan Fox film which finds itself on two lists. That guy must be onto something. Of course it's true that every other Israeli film might somehow or other reference the Holocaust, but here once again Fox has the special knack of plugging the external issue (or rather, in this case the deeply felt historical issue) directly into contemporary Israeli existence, and that is why the film belongs on both the "normal" list and this far from normal list.

• The Pawnbroker (1964)
• Divided We Fall (2000)
• Walk on Water (Lalekhet al Mayim - ללכת על המים) (2004)
• God on Trial (2008)
• Son of Saul (2015)
• Plan A (2021)
• The Zone of Interest (2023)