In these days of war and turmoil, Docaviv, the 27th Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival, which opens on May 22 and runs till the end of the month, will present films that look deeply at the current situation, as well as movies on a diverse range of subjects, with an especially rich selection of movies about the arts.
The festival, which is held at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and other venues around the city, will open with Holding Liat, a moving documentary by Brandon Kramer about the American immigrant family of Liat Atzili, who was taken hostage on October 7 and released in late 2023. Her partner, Aviv Atzili, was murdered by Hamas and is still among the 58 hostages held in Gaza.
This intimate look at a family in the grip of a crisis no one should have to deal with won the Berlinale Documentary Award and is of interest not only because of its portrayal of the hostage crisis but also for its portrait of an American-Israeli family who struggle to maintain their liberal political outlook as they fight for their daughter’s return.
The movie will be shown in theaters all over Israel following the festival and will later be shown on Yes Docu and Sting+. I would especially recommend this film to English-speaking immigrants to Israel, because it shines a light on the nuances of the Israeli-American experience.
Liat’s family members have different points of view about Israel and often argue about politics and strategy, but they still pull together as a family to fight for Liat’s release around the world.
Nimrod Shapira’s gripping documentary, Torn, looks at the disturbing phenomenon of people tearing down hostage posters in New York City. Torn traces the origin of the posters, which were designed by artists Nitzan Mintz and Dede Bandaid to promote awareness of the 250 hostages, never thinking they would end up being seen as controversial – and certainly not that they would be ripped down.
The screening will feature a conversation with Bandaid and the film’s director. Reut Barnea, a journalist and curator, will moderate the conversation.
Gad Aisen’s Kichka: Telling Myself is a portrait of illustrator/cartoonist/graphic novelist Michel Kichka, a second-generation Holocaust survivor and Belgian immigrant to Israel who told his family’s story in My Father’s Secrets, an animated movie.
If you saw the exhibit at the National Library of Israel to mark the 100th anniversary of Franz Kafka’s death, you’ll remember the striking piece by Kichka there, “One Kafka, One Hundred Times,” that shows 100 images of the writer. It’s interesting to hear Kichka’s story and learn how he works.
Another famous graphic novelist and illustrator is the subject of a documentary this year: Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse by Molly Bernstein and Philip Dolin.
Spiegelman is best known for his two-part Maus graphic novel, which tells his parents’ Holocaust survival story and examines his own contentious relationship with them. Spiegelman is the artist who brought serious literary attention to graphic novels, but he also created the Garbage Pail Kids cards and did some famous art for The New Yorker magazine.
Folk-dance lovers will want to see Avi Weissblei’s Hora, which examines the tradition of Israeli folk-dancing. The film looks at its history and how it blended dance movements from East and West and explores how this famous dance tradition continues.
Music section
The music section of Docaviv is especially strong. Janis Ian: Breaking Silence by Varda Bar-Kar examines the life and work of the teen folk-music singer-songwriter who burst onto the music scene in the late 1960s with “Society’s Child,” a song about racism, and followed it up with “At Seventeen,” a paean to teenage angst that was wildly successful. The film looks at her early success and the activism that has been an important part of her life.
Kevin Macdonald (grandson of legendary Hungarian-British director Emeric Pressburger) has made several highly regarded music documentaries in the past, including Whitney (about Whitney Houston) and Marley (about Bob Marley). He has co-directed, with Sam Rice-Edwards, the film One to One: John & Yoko, a look at John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1972, as they prepared for a benefit concert for special-needs children.
Googoosh: Made of Fire, directed by Niloufar Taghizadeh, tells the fascinating story of Googoosh, who was an Iranian superstar singer before the Islamic Revolution, left the country and went into hiding, and then made a major comeback, singing for expatriate Iranian communities around the world.
Movies on the arts
Movies on all the arts are a strong feature of Docaviv, and those who love the French New Wave will want to see Francois Truffaut, My Life, A Screenplay by David Teboul, who collaborated on the screenplay with Serge Toubiana, a film critic who was director of the Cinematheque Francaise.
Truffaut was a great director, known for such films as his semi-autobiographical look at his troubled childhood, The 400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player, and Jules and Jim. This is not a conventional documentary, and it turns to Truffaut’s letters and journals to tell his life from his point of view and features rare interviews and archival footage. It goes into detail about how he discovered late in his life that his biological father was Jewish.
For those familiar with his work, this is a must-see and far more evocative than many of the standard past documentaries about him. For those unfamiliar with his movies, it may be bewildering at times, because very little context is given for some of the sections.
This year, a new category has been added to the festival, World in Conflict, which features movies looking at conflicts around the world, including throughout the Middle East.
The Yad Vashem Award for an outstanding Holocaust-related documentary will be presented to Oren Rudavsky, director of Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire.
The festival features many special events, as well as a whole slate of pitching and industry events.For the full schedule, go to the festival website at docaviv.co.il
