Over the first 25 years of this century, the local film industry has become one of the most justified sources of national pride. We asked our film critic to choose the best Israeli films released since the turn of the millennium, and she came back with 15 movies you absolutely need to know. How many of them have you already seen?
Over the first 25 years of the millennium, the local film industry has given us enormous pride. Local creativity has been bubbling, the boundaries of Israeli cinema have expanded, and even the Oscars have felt almost within reach (even if the statuette itself has yet to come home with us). We asked our film critic Yael Shuv to select the very best Israeli feature films of the 21st century, at least so far. Here are her picks – unranked, but highly recommended.
>>לתפארת מדינת ישראל: 15 הסרטים הישראלים הטובים ביותר במאה ה-21
Fill the Void (2012)
Rama Burshtein’s debut film is made from within the ultra-Orthodox world it portrays, and accepts with understanding the rules and laws that mark its borders. At the heart of the film is the story of 18-year-old Shira (Hadas Yaron), who lives with her family in the center of Tel Aviv. Shira wants to be a good daughter and fulfill her mother’s wish (Irit Sheleg) that she marry Yochai (Yiftach Klein), who was widowed from her older sister Esther. But she also wants to choose a husband for herself, according to her own desires. When her mother first conceives of the idea of filling the void Esther left behind with her younger sister, both Yochai and Shira respond with an emphatic no. From that point on, the film beautifully describes Shira’s emotional and psychological struggles and processes, and gradually the void fills with longing. The classic conflict between duty and love gets an interesting twist here, the cultural restraint adds an effective spice of forbidden love, and the film overwhelms the senses (also thanks to meticulous cinematography and lighting). Yaron beautifully shapes Shira as a brave young woman who is mostly frightened by herself and by her own desires, and for this she won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival.
Waltz with Bashir (2008)
Ari Folman’s semi-documentary, animated and deeply personal film, which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, is quite possibly the most acclaimed and influential cinematic work ever to emerge from Israel. The movie depicts the traumatic experiences of Israeli soldiers in the Lebanon War—and specifically the Sabra and Shatila massacre in September 1982—as they are etched in their memories many years after the events themselves. David Polonsky’s vividly expressive illustrations move between dream and nightmare, turning the film into a fertile visual metaphor for post-traumatic stress. From the breathtaking vision of a pack of attack dogs tearing through the streets of Tel Aviv against fire-colored skies, through the surreal fantasy of a naked, giant Ella emerging from the sea, to the chilling video footage at the end of the film, this is a brilliant, uniquely inspired one-of-a-kind work.
Zero Motivation (2014)
The frustration, boredom and humiliation of women’s service in the IDF provide fertile ground for a smart, original, razor-sharp comedy about female soldiers on a base in the Arava whose minds gradually begin to unravel. Talya Lavie wrote a brilliant script on every level – the dialogue is layered and rich in nuance, filled with clashing jargons, and the paper shredder that appears in the first act “fires” in the last. Three chapters focus on the stories of three human-resources clerks: Daffi (Nelly Tagar) dreams of escaping the desert and getting transferred to the Kirya; Zohar (a riotous Dana Ivgy) breaks records in Minesweeper (the game), buries her head in her army parka and waits for it all to be over; and the officer Rama (Shani Klein), the only woman in the staff meetings, longs for promotion but can’t manage to control her soldiers (and so she makes coffee for the male officers around her, in an unconscious acceptance of the army’s gender hierarchy). Every character is superbly drawn and wonderfully acted. And even in their craziest moments, they remain human. Lavie plants in the film weighty, highly relevant issues such as sexual harassment and female solidarity in the military sphere, and treats them in a very entertaining yet serious, piercing and non-preachy way. The film moves between wild laughter and painful revelations, and between heartwarming moments and a punch to the gut.
The Kindergarten Teacher (2014)
Nira (Sarit Larry), a kindergarten teacher, yearns to express herself through poetry, but poetry does not express itself through her. When she notices the radiance shining from the poems of five-year-old Yoav (Avi Shnaidman in a miraculous performance), she takes it upon herself to protect this budding talent from the indifference of a brutal world in general, and from the machismo of Israeli culture in particular. Fearing that this beauty might slip through her fingers, she devotes herself entirely to nurturing it and offers herself as the soil in which it can grow. But in her desire to preserve the poet, is she harming the child? She pushes away his nanny and tries to entice the muse with methods that become increasingly sensual, desperate and detached from reality—because reality, after all, is the problem. Nadav Lapid has created a rich, layered, sensual and overwhelming cinematic essay, whose allegorical tones reach full expression in the stunning final shot. The 2018 American remake is not as good.
Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (2014)
Ten years after she gave in to family pressure to stay with her husband, Viviane Amsalem (Ronit Elkabetz) is in the midst of a grueling struggle to obtain a get, a religious divorce, from him. This film brings the trilogy by siblings Shlomi and Ronit Elkabetz about a Moroccan-Israeli family to its electrifying conclusion (Shiva is also excellent), and takes place entirely within the walls of the rabbinical court. It’s a bold structural and artistic choice that gives the movie a sense of eternal present, mirroring the feeling of Viviane, trapped in her marriage. White walls, men in black suits—for most of the film this is black-and-white in color, and only the women occasionally add splashes of color. Viviane is a tempestuous woman driven to distraction by her husband’s passive-aggressive behavior, but in the claustrophobic and at times grotesque theater of the religious court she is forced to maintain dignified restraint, and this conflict amplifies Elkabetz’s performance. This is a charged, stylized, rich and deeply frustrating drama, written and directed with a master’s hand, that finds a great deal of humor in despair.
Foxtrot (2017)
The film that launched a thousand rapturous and furious words is a dramatic bombshell and a glowing cinematic crystal. A unique narrative structure woven with potent, echoing images, superb acting, meticulous design and stunning cinematography transform Samuel Maoz’s (“Lebanon”) surreal dance into something very local and yet possessed of global moral and human force. In the first act, Lior Ashkenazi delivers a crushing performance as a father who receives an erroneous notification that his soldier son has fallen in the line of duty, and things only get more tangled from there. This is a film about stagnation and a masculine legacy of emotional numbness, which is why its most human and moving moments belong to the women – Sarah Adler as the mother and Keren Mor as a passenger in the rain—as well as to the family’s long-suffering dog. No wonder the film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
The Band’s Visit (2007)
Eran Kolirin’s film unfolds a tale about a small Egyptian police orchestra that comes to perform in Israel (even back then, this wasn’t realistic). Due to a misunderstanding at the airport, the band ends up by mistake in a lonely town in the Negev and its members are forced to stay there until the next day. Not much happens over the course of the night, as the musicians disperse among the homes of the locals – some land in the middle of a family birthday dinner, one tags along as a fifth wheel on a double date, and another clings to a public phone, waiting for a call from the Egyptian embassy. Their powder-blue uniforms sharpen their foreignness in the desert town. This is a small, humane film steeped in gentle humor that recalls Czech comedies of the 1960s. The character of Tewfiq, the dedicated and reserved band leader, acutely aware of his representative role and constantly straightening his uniform without realizing it, is embodied to perfection by Sasson Gabai. Opposite him, Ronit Elkabetz gives a warm, slightly aggressive yet vulnerable performance as the local diva. Their scenes together, as she throws herself at him and he, with wary restraint, opens only the slightest crack into his inner world, are deeply touching. In 2016 the film was adapted into a Broadway musical that went on to win a slew of awards.
Six Acts (2012)
Rona Segal wrote and Jonathan Gurfinkel directed a coming-of-age film that opens our eyes and turns our stomachs, and which, to our misfortune, remains painfully relevant and essential day after day. Seventeen-year-old Gili (Sivan Levy) transfers to a new high school in Herzliya and tries to find her place. The boys quickly sense her desperation to become popular and to feel loved and desired, and they sexually exploit her, one after the other. The film’s power lies in the precision with which it shapes the characters and the power dynamics, not only between the boys and Gili, but also within the bullying hierarchy among the boys themselves. There is no outright villain here, and yet a chillingly vile act is committed. Naturalistic dialogue and realistic direction create a complex, disturbing viewing experience, and at the same time one filled with compassion that spills off the screen toward the helpless audience.
Ajami (2009)
Several stories become entangled with one another in this Jaffa neighborhood in the film by Yaron Shani and Scandar Copti, which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Because of something his cousin did, the life of Omar, a Muslim, is threatened by a clan from Be’er Sheva. A case of mistaken identity that leads to the murder of another young man buys him a reprieve, but to be spared death he must pay an exorbitant blood price. The teen Malek arrives from Nablus to work in the restaurant of Abu Elias, a Christian. He too needs a bundle of cash to fund medical treatment in Israel for his sick mother. Both of them get tangled up with Dando, a Jewish cop (Eran Naim from My Eyes Are My Witness), a warm family man whose soldier brother has been missing for some time. The early chapters describe the stories of three of the protagonists in a more or less chronological order, but with many gaps that produce certain, sometimes misleading, impressions about the characters and events. The later chapters return to earlier points in time, providing jolting answers to troubling questions and altering those impressions – sometimes to the point of complete reversal. Here we have an unusually powerful combination of harsh, reality-based material and a formalist mosaic-of-time structure full of gaps, playing with the audience’s expectations and generating a cascade of shifting responses. It’s a violent, thrilling film that sketches a piercing metaphor for Israel’s socio-political pressure cooker.
The Wedding Plan (2016)
Michal (the utterly wonderful Noa Koler) has become religiously observant and drawn close to Breslov Hasidism. A month before her wedding date, as she and her intended sit tasting dishes at Shimi’s banquet hall (Amos Tamam), the groom-to-be backs out. Michal decides to throw all her trust on God to find her a husband by the already-set date, and does not cancel the booking of the hall. The romantic comedy is, at its core, a genre of faith: it encourages us to believe that there is “the one,” whom some higher providence will make sure to bring to the heroine’s doorstep. By bringing faith in God explicitly into the equation, Rama Burshtein (“Fill the Void”) essentially exposes the genre’s roots and at the same time reinvents it. As in countless silly romcoms, she concocts an implausible plot framework, but fills it with rich human content and a vibrating longing for love. The screenplay is a marvel of precise characterization, sparkling dialogue and clever construction of surprising dramatic and comic turns. Within the frame of a romantic fantasy, Burshtein creates different degrees of fantasy, and through them wittily and movingly examines her heroine’s faith. It’s a piece of cinematic magic that manages to confuse us on the way to the perfect ending, and it expands the heart – even the atheistic ones. At Beit Lessin, the film was adapted into a successful stage musical. The original is much better.
Beaufort (2007)
The powerful film by Joseph Cedar and Ron Leshem, which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, is an anti-war movie. One of its sources of strength is the choice to locate the entire story inside the sealed-off space of an IDF outpost tucked away in Lebanon. The quiet, tense claustrophobia of its tunnels and fortifications is rendered in an almost surreal scene at the beginning of the film, when a sapper (Ohad Knoller) arriving to defuse a mine at the outpost gets lost in the maze. With its ascetic, meticulously controlled style, the film succeeds in being both an artistic, stylized cinematic work and a powerful evocation of the actual charged experience of soldiers trapped inside a position. They count down the days to the impending withdrawal in an atmosphere saturated with fear, frustration and futility—and they count the dead, whose numbers keep rising. This is not a film about the heroism of the little soldier, but about the appalling waste of the sons’ lives, for which the fathers and their unnecessary orders from above are responsible.
Seven Blessings (2023)
Not even the war managed to halt this film’s victory march, which brought around 350,000 viewers into theaters. Spanning a series of family dinners held in honor of the wedding of daughter Marie (Reymonde Amsellem, who also co-wrote the script with Elinor Sela, who plays her sister), the movie serves up a hearty, delicious feast for its audience. Marie, who built an impressive career in France and returned to Israel to get married, is angry with her family because as an infant, her mother (Tiki Dayan) handed her over to her childless sister (Rivka Bahar). The dynamics between the characters are highly entertaining and at times painful. Some of the relatives are played by actual relatives of the filmmakers, and they are so good that it’s impossible to tell them apart from the professional actors. The large ensemble scenes have a natural, authentic flow, combined with perfect choreography of actors and camera, resulting in a thrilling cinematic celebration conducted by Ayelet Menahemi.
Personal Affairs (2017)
Maha Haj’s film is a delicate, witty and utterly charming sketch of an unhappy Palestinian family. We’ve seen films in which a static camera watches characters from a distance, but it’s rare for that gaze to be so full of subtle humor, tinged with absurdity, and at the same time so deeply empathetic that by the end you want to get up and hug the director. Nabila and Salah live in Nazareth. She cooks and knits, ignoring him as he reads her articles about birds that he finds on the internet. Their son Tarek prefers to live in Ramallah rather than deal with his parents, and their other son Hisham has gone as far as Sweden. Sister Samar has an idea how to convince the parents to travel to visit him, hoping that a vacation in a lakeside house will refresh their monotonous marriage. The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is on the margins of the story, yet at the heart of the characters’ sense of dislocation and estrangement, and it’s hinted at in poetic, profoundly moving scenes.
This City (2023)
Detective Joe Halfon (Amit Ulman) tends to interpret clues literally, or rely on wild guesses, which drives his partner (Omer Baron) crazy, as he can’t make sense of Joe’s methods. When the duo set out to investigate what happened to the sister of the seductive Sarah Bennett, they are joined by Alon Neuman as a police inspector and Idan Alterman as the emissary of the mysterious Menashe, the kingpin of the underworld whom nobody has ever seen. The cult rap opera that began onstage has received a superb cinematic adaptation, unlike anything ever seen on an Israeli screen. Ulman, Baron and Omer Mor, who composed the music, have created a unique, cohesive amalgam of dark Hollywood-style detective thrillers with wildly Israeli logic that is nonetheless polished down to the last detail – all set to a hip-hop beat and brimming with inspired rhymes. It’s a kind of dream about a dream of America that swivels its gaze back to the Israeli culture in which it’s rooted, made with an abundance of style and talent.
Footnote (2011)
Every film begins with a cluster of words on a page, but only a handful turn words themselves into the subject. Joseph Cedar’s fourth film (“Beaufort”), which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, is about words and their overt and hidden meanings. A. Shkolnik and A. Shkolnik are Talmud professors who pore over ancient texts and set off on journeys between their lines. The rigid, embittered father (Shlomo Bar-Aba in a dazzling performance) barricades himself in the ivory tower of academia and resents his son (Lior Ashkenazi) – a sought-after lecturer and popular guest on TV talk shows – for his populist success. One day the sour father receives a phone call that puts a rare smile on his face, and from there an intricate, twist-filled plot unfolds, shaping the film as both a detective thriller and a deceptive psychological drama that gives new resonance to the fifth commandment. This is an intimate, ironic, multi-layered movie whose core is a titanic struggle between father and son, and between the son and himself. Who would have thought that the academic backwater could be this riveting? The final scene unfolds against the backdrop of the Israel Prize award ceremony, which makes Footnote feel particularly topical every Independence Day.
