2013 Festival

04-13.07.2013

Opening Film: Hunting Elephants                              

The winner of the Haggiag Family Award for Israeli Cinema in Memory of Robert Nissim for Best Full-Length Feature is Youth, directed by Tom Shoval, and produced by Gal Greenspan, Roi Kurland, Moshe & Leon Edery

The winner of the Van Leer Award for Israeli Cinema for Best Documentary Film is Life Sentences, directed and produced by Nurit Kedar & Yaron Shani

Following are the winning films in the Festival competitions:

FULL-LENGTH FEATURE AWARDS

The Haggiag Family Award for Israeli Cinema in Memory of Robert Nissim for Best Full-Length Feature Film, in the amount of NIS 100,000, goes to director Tom Shoval and producers by Gal Greenspan, Roi Kurland, Moshe & Leon Edery for the film Youth.

Jury statement: There are many ways to judge the greatness of a film. One way, for us, would be the way a work stays with us—how days afterwards, images or patches of dialogue will come back to us, showing that the film has now simply now become part of our lives.  That has been our experience with our winner. We believe this is an enormously powerful work, one that captures and expresses an achingly loneliness that goes far beyond the very particular story it narrates. 

The Pirchi Family Award in Memory of Anat Pirchi for Best First or Second Israeli feature, in the amount of 25,000 NIS, goes to director Maya Dreifuss, for the film She’s Coming Home.

Jury statement: As was said before about this year’s shorts programs, the excellence of so many of the first and second Israeli features augers well for the future of this nation’s cinema. For the Pirchi Family Award for Best First or Second Full Length Feature Film, the jury has selected a bold, unsettling work that challenges the audience to continually re-orient its relationship to its fascinating if often enigmatic characters.

The Pirchi Family Award in Memory of Anat Pirchi for Best Screenplay in a Full-Length Feature in the amount of 25,000 NIS goes to scriptwriter Adi Adwan, for the film Arabani.

 Jury statement: The Pirchi Family Award for Best Screenplay in an Israeli Full-Length Feature is given to a film that followed a complex human drama as it simultaneously revealed aspects of an unknown culture to us—while respecting that culture’s right to maintain its mystery. 

The Haggiag Family Award for Israeli Cinema in Memory of Robert Nissim for Best Actress, in the amount of NIS 10,000, goes to Tali Sharon for her role in She’s Coming Home

 Jury Statement: For Best Actress, the Jury decided to honor a performance that delighted, thrilled, shocked and even scared us. It’s extraordinary to see someone give themselves over so totally to their performance, and yet at the same time maintain an air of mystery about themselves, something that makes us want to keep discovering more and more about her.

The Haggiag Family Award for Israeli Cinema in Memory of Robert Nissim for Best Actor, in the amount of NIS 10,000, goes to David & Eitan Cunio, for their roles in Youth.

 Jury Statement: Our award for Best Actor will be shared by two young actors, and yet while each gives his own outstanding performance, the intensity of their on screen relationship makes it especially fitting that they will both be this festival’s Best Actor.

The Haggiag Family Award for Israeli Cinema in Memory of Robert Nissim for Editing in the amount of 10,000 NIS goes to Joelle Alexis, for editing work on the film Youth.

 Jury Statement: Our jury had one of its longest discussions around the category of editing, as several of these films offer outstanding examples of the editor’s art and craft. Yet a decision had to be made, and in in the end we felt that the extraordinary control of the rhythm in a work so dominated by split-second changes of tone and action pointed to Joelle Alexis, for her work in YOUTH, as the winner of the 2013 Haggiag Family Award for Best Editing

The Haggiag Family Award for Israeli Cinema in Memory of Robert Nissim Music in the amount of 10,000 NIS goes to Ran Bagno, for his work on the film Fragile.

 Jury Statement: Music can often be a decisive element in creating a film’s atmosphere, and our jury felt this year’s winner helped transport us to a very special time and place.

The Van Leer Group Foundation Award for Cinematography in a Full-Length Film in the amount of 10,000 NIS goes to Shai Peleg, for his work on the film She’s Coming Home.

 Jury Statement: The Van Leer Foundation Award for Best Full Length Feature Cinematography goes to a film that visually radiates the energy so powerfully detailed within its narrative and performances.

 SHORT FILM AWARDS

The Van Leer Group Foundation Award for Best Student Short Narrative Film in the amount of 20,000 NIS, goes to Yotam Ben-David, for the film Remains.

Jury statement: The 2013 Van Leer Group Award for Best Student Short Narrative goes to a remarkable film that in its own unique way offers an affecting look at modern relationships at a moment when all the rules have changed.

Honorable Mention goes to Ehab Tarabieh, for the film The Forgotten and Gan de Lange, for the Babaga

Jury Statement: One is a marvelously realized fantasy tale that nevertheless beautifully captures real feelings of desire and longing; the other is a meticulously observed chronicle of a man navigating a tense border crossing, hoping to return to his childhood home.

The Adélie Hoffenberg Award for Independent Israeli Short Film in the amount of 15,000 NIS goes to Tamar Baruch for the film Gloria.

Jury statement: The 2013 Adele Hoffenberg Award for Best Student Short Israeli Film goes to the beautifully photographed, wry chronicle of a brief encounter between an overly literary young man and his father’s young girlfriend very, very late one night.

Honorable Mention goes to Peleg Levi, for the film Cocoon (Golem) and Michelle and Uri Kranot, for The Hollow Land

Jury Statement: Special Mentions have been bestowed on two films, one a crisp re-imagining of the thriller genre in which a young man finds himself trapped in the parking garage of his nightmares; the other is a magnificent, cutting edge animation that’s as wry as it is pointed in its critique faded dreams of emigration.

Members of the Jury:

Richard Peña, Tawfik Abu Wael, Evegenia Dodina, Sarig Peker, Mihal Brezis

DOCUMENTARY FILM AWARDS

The Van Leer Group Foundation Award for Best Documentary Film, in the amount of 35,000 NIS, goes to directors and producers Nurit Kedar & Yaron Shani for the film Life Sentences.

Jury statement: A remarkable documentary, portrait of a man whose very body and soul reflect Israel and Palestine complexities.

The Best Director of a Documentary Film Award, in the amount of 20,000 NIS, goes to Halil Efrat, for the film Album 61.

Jury statement: A wonderful display of the documentary director’s art. Turning the world chess championship into a nerve wracking drama and a careful examination of the impact of parental ambition

Honorable Mention goes to:

Nissim Mossek for the film Wild West Hebron and Shosh Shlam & Hila Medalia for their film Electronic Heroin.

Members of the Jury:

Kenneth Turan, Rachel Leah Jones, Dror Moreh, Brian Winston, Naomi Levari.

The “In the Spirit of Freedom” Awards in Memory of Wim Van Leer

The Feature Award goes to director Danis Tanovic, for the film, An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker.

Jury statement: This film is about the daily heroism which the most downtrodden members of society must display in order to survive. The main characters of the movie – who play their own identities and probably themselves—are an iron picker and his pregnant wife. The movie mixes and blends in a virtuosic fashion the documentary and fiction, making the viewer aware of the immense efforts it takes to simply keep things in their usually miserably level of poverty. We could expect to see their struggle to survive in the usual stereotypes of vulgarity brutality and gypsies’ violence. Instead, we meet characters who act with tenderness, care and devotion in a way that lifts the spirit, all the while keeping our awareness of their destitution. The unexpected characters leave us at the end with such a strong love as powerful existence despite this misery and hopeless life.

The Ostrovsky Family Foundation Award goes to director Rithy Pahn, for the documentary film, The Missing Picture.

Jury statement: This is a riveting movie of the kind that has not been seen in years. It is at once a memoir and a documentary account of the power of the Khmer Rouges in Cambodia. Through a very astute mise en scene of miniature puppets, the film maker recounts his memories of the ways in which the communist revolution devastated the country and destroyed the very sense of individuality. But this is also a profound reflection on the cinema, on the role of images in one’s memory, on the images which show too much, on those we do not and cannot see, on those we should not show. Ultimately the movie asks whether the screen images block consciousness and offers startling narrative and visual strategies to pierce our consciousness.  The cinematic language is hauntingly poetic, never turning a horrifying history into the spectacle of itself.

Honorable Mention goes to Jose Luis Valle for the film Workers

Jury statement: This movie presents unforgettable characters that oscillate between despair and guerilla-like survival strategies of warfare, to fight off the domination of two different types of rich people: the old ones – who issue on their workers entirely capricious orders which they must execute by making themselves ridiculous, and the new bureaucratic capitalism, which destroys people through impersonal rules.  The ascetic editing cinematography creates theatrical effects similar to those of the great melodramas of Sirk, Fassbinder, or Almodovar, yet retain a sharp and poignant sense of irony.

 The Members of the Jury: Avner Faingulerant, Hagar Ben Asher, Eva Ilouz.

The Jewish Experience Awards Endowed by Leon and Michaela Constantiner

The Lia Award, presented by the Joan Sourasky-Constantiner Holocaust Multimedia Research Center of the Jerusalem Cinematheque, in the amount of $3000, goes to director Diana Gróo, for the film Regina.

Jury Statement: A puzzle, a riddle, a single photo—Regina. Diana Gróo has managed with the most minimal of clues and a detective’s curiosity to reanimate the remarkable personality of Regina Jonas, the first ordained woman rabbi in the world. Using archival footage, fragments of letters, snippets of memoirs, and her own ingenuity, Gróo has brought a long-gone spirit back to life and in doing so, introduced us all to a brave and utterly singular woman.

The Avner Shalev Yad Vashem Chairman’s Award, presented by the Yad Vashem Visual Center, in the amount of $3,000 goes to director Wladyslaw Pasikowski, for the film Aftermath.

Jury Statement: Aftermath is a gripping journey into the heart of the Holocaust’s darkness, a film that manages both to reckon with the most painful of historical events and to bring them eerily to life in the present tense.  Polish director Wladyslaw Pasikowski’s film is a courageous—and necessary— reckoning with willful forgetting; it’s also a visually startling and wrenching movie about Poles and Jews, brothers and neighbors, and what lies beneath them.

Honorable Mention goes to Yoav Halevy for the film Bureau 06

Jury statement: Bureau 06 is an energetic, well-researched examination of the police unit assigned to interrogate Adolf Eichmann before his trial. While the Israeli public knows a great deal about the trial itself, the story of the legal preparation for the case—and the characters involved in that complicated process—has been until now largely hidden from view. This documentary takes us behind the scenes of this dramatic historical moment in dynamic and surprisingly moving fashion.

Members of the Jury: Ami Drozd, Adina Hoffman, Régina-Mihal Friedman

The Israeli Video-Art and Experimental Film Awards

First Prize in Memory of Murray L. Galinson for Experimental Films and Video Works goes to Tzion Abraham Hazan, for the film Marganith.

The Second Place winner, courtesy of the Ostrovsky Family Foundation goes to Alona Rodeh, for the film Barking Dogs Don't Bite and to Keren Shavit, for the film Shelf Life

Members of the Jury: 

Prof. Ryszard Kluszczynski, Maayan Amir, Dr. Roy Brand

The Jerusalem Pitch Point

The Jerusalem Pitch Point is a meeting place for Israeli filmmakers and producers with key-members of the international film industry, to encourage and promote international co-productions with Israeli full-length fiction feature films.

The 8th Jerusalem Pitch Point winners:

The International Relations ARTE Prize goes to The Burglar by director Hagar Ben Asher

The Van Leer Award goes to Ben Zaken by director Efrat Corem

The CNC Award goes to Tikkun, by director Avishay Sivan

Honorable Mention goes to director Amichai Greenberg for the film The Testament

International Titles included:

אפסטרים קולור UPSTREAM COLOR