DocAviv, Israel’s top documentary festival, has finalized the selection for its 17^th edition (May 7-16).

With a solid reputation to defend, the festival will kick off with Laura Poitras’ Academy Award winner Citizenfour, whose theme, the onging Edward Snowden saga, fits one of the festival’s main concerns - “(un)Free World”.

Some 13 Israeli films have been selected to compete in the Docaviv Isreali Film Competition.

A total 11 world premieres are competing for The Sarah and Michael Sela Prize

The $18,000 (NIS 70,000) award is the largest prize for documentary filmmaking offered anywhere in Israel.

Some 75 Israeli films have been submitted to the Israeli competition. Well known names among the contenders include: Reuven Brodsky with 7 Days in St. Petersburg, whose previous film Home Movie has won the 2012 Docaviv competition, Avigail Sperber produced Girsa De’Yankuta by Noa Roth, Censored Voices by Mor Loushy which premiered in Sundance and Twilight of a Life, which will premiere at Nyons’ Visions du Reel.

Previous winners of this competition have been amongst others Life in Stills by Tamar Tal, Probation Time by Avigail Sperber and Google Baby by Zippi Brand Frank.

Brett Morgen, whose documentaries The Kid Stays in the Picture and Chicago 10 are considered milestones in the history of documentary film will present his latest film Cobain: Montage of Heck and conduct a special masterclass.  

Other international guests attending the festival are Naum Kleiman, founder of the Eisenstein Centre and former director of the Moscow Cinema Museum, David Courier (Sundance Film Festival), Niklas Engstrom (DOC:CHX); Cherelle Zheng (iDoc, Beijing), film critic Boyd van Hoeij, and Ina Rossow (Deckert Distribution).

New additions

A new Arts and Culture Competition is being launched this year by Docaviv, dedicated to the variety of local culture and its heroes.

This year, five new films will compete for a grand prize of $2,500 (NIS 10,000). The films in this competition focus on major cultural legacies such as playwright Nisim Aloni, singer-songwriter Matti Caspi, poet Dahlia Ravikovich, author Yosef Haim Brenner, and liturgical poet David Buzaglo.

Other awards include the Mayor’s Prize for Most Promising Filmmaker, the Award for Best Editing, the Award for Best Cinematography, the Award for Best Research, and, for the first time, the Award for Original Score.

Seven films from the country’s leading film schools have been selected to compete in Docaviv’s annual Student Film Competition. Members of the selection committee for this competition include DocAviv’s Programming Manager Karin Rywkind Segal, curator Hila Avraham, and screenwriter and director Danny Rosenberg.

Docaviv – the Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival 7 – 16 May 2015

-13 Films in the Israeli Film Competition Announced

- New Competition for  Local Culture and Its Heroes

-7 Films Selected for the Depth of Field Competition

  Awarding Artistic Vision

-7 Films Selected for the Student Film Competition

The 17^th Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival, Docaviv, has finalized the selection of the program. “(un)Free World” is one of the main themes. The festival will open with a gala screening of the Academy Award-winning film Citzenfour by director Laura Poitras. This riveting documentary is just one prominent example of a probing selection of fascinating films, which focus on the assault on democracy and human rights taking around the world.

Thirteen Israeli films have been selected to compete in the Docaviv Isreali Film Competition. 11 world premieres are competing for The Sarah and Michael Sela Prize

(NIS 70.000, approx. 17.000 US $) the largest prize for documentary filmmaking offered anywhere in Israel. Some 75 Israeli films have been submitted to the Israeli competition. Some well known names among the contenders are: Reuven Brodsky with 7 Days in St. Petersburg, whose previous film Home Movie has won the 2012 Docaviv competition, Avigail Sperber produced Girsa De’Yankuta by Noa Roth, Censored Voices by Mor Loushy which premiered in Sundance and Twilight of a Life, which premiered at IDFA. Previous winners of this competition have been amongst others Life in Stills by Tamar Tal, Probation Time by Avigail Sperber and Google Baby by Zippi Brand Frank.

Brett Morgen, whose classic documentaries “The Kid Stays in the Picture” and “Chicago 10” are considered milestones in the history of documentary film will present his latest film Cobain: Montage of Heck and conduct a special Master Class.  

Other international guests attending the festival are film critic Boyd van Hoeij, Naum Kleiman, founder of the Eisenstein Centre and former director of the Moscow Cinema MuseumDavid Courier (Sundance Film Festival), Niklas Engstrom (DOC:CHX); Cherelle Zheng (iDoc, Beijing),and Ina Rossow (Deckert Distribution).

Arts and Culture Competition. A new competition being launched this year by Docaviv is dedicated to the remarkable variety of local culture and its heroes. This year, five new films will be competing for a grand prize of NIS 10,000. (approx. US$ 2500) The films in this competition focus on major cultural legacies such as playwright Nisim Aloni, singer-songwriter Matti Caspi, poet Dahlia Ravikovich, author Yosef Haim Brenner, and liturgical poet David Buzaglo.

Other awards include the Mayor’s Prize for Most Promising Filmmaker, the Award for Best Editing, the Award for Best Cinematography, the Award for Best Research, and, for the first time, the Award for Original Score.

Seven films from the country’s leading film schools have been selected to compete in Docaviv’s annual Student Film Competition. Members of the selection committee for this competition include DocAviv’s Programming Manager Karin Rywkind Segal, curator Hila Avraham, and screenwriter and director Danny Rosenberg.

Israeli films in competition

World Premiers

17 Beginnings of Talia
Director: Yoni Bentovim
Production: Anath Kandell
Israeli Competition
Israel 2015, 73 min, Hebrew and English, English subtitles
Actress Talia Shapira was a colorful figure, hilarious and uninhibited. She left dozens of films and hundreds of notebook behind when she died … and so much more besides. Twenty-five years later, her son, director Yoni Bentovim, tries to come to grips with that vast legacy.

7 Days in St. Petersburg
Director & Production: Reuven Brodsky
Israeli Competition
Israel 2015, 60 min, Hebrew and Russian, Hebrew & English subtitles
Liza is flying to Russia to bring her deserter son Leonid back to Israel, The seven days she spends there are like a brief furlough from prison. Time is limited. Nothing is trivial.
 
Against Your Will
Director & Production: Assaf Banitt
Israeli Competition
Israel 2015, 51 min, Hebrew, English subtitles
After Amit committed suicide in the army, the secretary of his parents’ religious kibbutz asked them to describe what happened as a gun accident. When their second son committed suicide, they refused to remain silent. They have now launched an effort to commemorate their two boys, even though their kibbutz considers suicide to be a source of shame and a sin.

Better Late…
Director: Eyal Tuizer
Production: David Noy, Yoram Ivry
Israeli Competition
Israel 2015, 65 min, Hebrew, English and Moroccan, English subtitles
After 15 years of failed attempts to have children, a couple entering their golden years finally conceives. Unfortunately though, an unexpected turn of events changes all their plans.
 
Bums, Go Home
Director & Production: Claudia Levin
Israeli Competition
Israel 2015, 56 min, Hebrew and English, English subtitles
Summer 2011 was different for everyone, a Global revolution.In Tel Aviv we met the homeless, “The Orphan of Society.” Most of them suffering from PTSD, victims of sexual assault, domestic violence victims, psychiatric patients, prostitutes and drug addicts.
 
Closed Story
Director & Production: Micha Livne
Israeli Competition
Israel 2015, 90 min, Hebrew, English subtitles
After 30 years suppressing and denying the traumatic events that took place at the Battle of Sultan Yaakub, the director and protagonist of this film is forced to choice between loyalty to his fellow officers and looking in the mirror to see the painful truth about manliness, fear and emotional resiliance.
 
Credit for Murder
Director & Production: Vladi Antonevicz
Israeli Competition
Israel 2015, 104 min, English and Russian, Hebrew & English subtitles
A shocking video of a double murder in Russia appeared on YouTube in 2007. The police investigation reached a dead end, but the director of this film and his friend go undercover on a daring investigation of their own. Snooping around the darkest crevices of Moscow’s neo-Nazi underground, they are determined to find the killers.
 
Girsa De’Yankuta
Director: Noa Roth
Production: Avigail Sperber, Lilach Adler
Israeli Competition
Israel 2015, 67 min, Hebrew, English subtitles
Noa Roth is the daughter of an ultra-Orthodox rabbi and a successful author. In this film she reopens the painful wounds still left from her parents’ dramatic divorce, when she was ripped from a familiar religious world and cast into an alien secular environment.
 
God’s Messengers
Director & Production: Itzik Lerner
Israeli Competition
Israel 2014, 75 min, Hebrew and Arabic, Hebrew & English subtitles
This is a rare document showing the Hilltop Youth at Gilad Farms, one of their most radical outposts. With the threat of evacuation hanging over their heads like a Sword of Damocles, they must confront the government, security forces, and even the Palestinians. They pose a rebellious, sometimes lawless and violent challenge to their foes, driven by an uncompromising ideology.
 
Saving Uncle Jacob
Director: Sivan Shtivi
Production: David Noy
Israeli Competition
Israel 2015, 68 min, Hebrew, English subtitles
Sivan recruits his heavily addicted family to try to quit smoking. in an attempt to save his Uncle Jacobs life.. An addictive, tragic-comic tale in search of the last ciggarette.
 
The Bentwich Syndrome
Director & Production: Gur Bentwich
Israeli Competition
Israel / United Kingdom 2015, 70 min, Hebrew and English, Hebrew & English subtitles
The founders of the distinguished Bentwich family of England considered themselves to be the pride of Zionism and of enlightened Judaism. Under the careful gaze of the director’s camera, however, that legacy is found to be highly exaggerated. It helps that the director is a scion of the family.
 

National Premiers

Censored Voices

(Sundance official selection)
Director: Mor Loushy
Production: Daniel Sivan, Hilla Medalia, Neta Zwebner
Israeli Competition
Israel / Germany 2015, 87 min, Hebrew and English, English subtitles
One week after the Six-Day War, recordings of the soldiers returning from battle were turned into the bestseller, “The Seventh Day: Soldiers Talk about the Six-Day War.” The censored selections of those recordings, which feature in this film, offer a candid, often heartbreaking picture of the war that changed Israel forever.
 
Twilight of a Life

(IDFA)
Director: Sylvain Biegeleisen
Production: Sylvain Biegeleisen, Gergory Zalcman, Alain Knol
Israeli Competition
Israel / Belgium 2015, 70 min, French, Hebrew & English subtitles
A Journey full of humor, joy and hope between a movie director and his 95 year old mother facing Old Age
 

International competition

A German Youth
Director: Jean-gabriel Périot
France / Switzerland / Germany 2015, 93 min, French and German, English subtitles

Approaching The Elephant
Director: Amanda Wilder
United States 2014, 89 min, English, No Subtitles

Citizenfour
Director: Laura Poitras
United Kingdom / Germany / United States 2015, 114 min, English, Hebrew subtitles

Democrats
Director: Camilla Nielsson
Denmark 2014, 100 min

The Look of Silence
Directors: Joshua Oppenheimer, Anonymous
Denmark / Indonesia / Norway / Finland / United Kingdom 2014, 102 min, Indonesian,

My Love Don’t Cross That River
Director: Mo-young Jin South Korea 2014, 86 min, Korean, Hebrew & English subtitles

 
Rich Hill
Directors: Tracey Droz Tragos, Andrew Droz Palermo
United States 2014, 93 min, English, No Subtitles
 
The Russian Woodpecker
Director: Chad Gracia
United Kingdom / United States 2014, 82 min, Ukrainian, English subtitles
 
The Shelter
Director: Fernand Melgar
Switzerland 2014, 101 min, English, French and Spanish, English subtitles

Toto and His Sisters
Director: Alexander Nanau
Romania 2014, 93 min, Romanian, English subtitles

The Wolfpack
Director: Crystal Moselle
United States 2015, 84 min, English

Depth of Field ( Competition)

15 Corners of the World
Director: Zuzanna Solakiewicz
Poland / Germany 2014, 79 min, Polish, English subtitles

1989
Director: Anders Østergaard, Erzsébet Rácz
Denmark 2014, 90 min, English, German and Hungarian

A Demonstrstion in the White City
Director & Production: Tal Haim Yoffe
Israel 2015, 48 min, Hebrew, English subtitles
 
B-Movie - Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979 - 1989
Directors: Heiko Lange, Klaus Maeck, Jörg A. Hoppe
Germany 2015, 94 min, English and German, English subtitles

The Infinite Happiness
Directors: Ila Beka, Louise Lemoine
France / Denmark 2015, 85 min, English and Danish, No Subtitles

 Sam Klemke’s Time Machine
Director: Matthew Bate
USA, 90 min
 
The Visit
Director: Michael Madsen
Denmark / Austria / Ireland / Finland / Norway 2014, 83 min, English, English subtitles