Eleven directors from 11 countries each contribute an 11-minute short reflecting on the events of 11 September 2001: A village teacher in Iran tries to explain to her young students what’s happened; city kids in Burkina Faso think they’ve spotted Osama bin Laden; a deaf Frenchwoman in Manhattan writes a Dear John letter to a man who left that morning for work at the World Trade Center; a Chilean remembers Allende; events recall other deaths; a mother endures more than her son’s death. The tones vary, as do the locales. Most stories are about others coming to terms with the events of the day, but at least one confronts the viewer with tragedy and death.
Tag: ISRAEL
Deceptively simple and executed with a documentary feel, this drama represents a highly personal journey home for expatriate Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman. The film is divided into two sections. The first documents the paradoxical but sleepy existence in the Arab part of Nazareth. The second part takes a more political view of the city and in it, Suleiman takes a more active role. He has come to his former home in search of inspiration, but what he sees are many disturbing images of Arab people trapped in a cultural identity crisis, a point best illustrated by the plight of a young Arab woman who wants more independence than traditionally allowed in her part of town but cannot find it because of prejudiced residents on the Jewish side.
Zaza is a good-looking and intelligent Israeli man in his thirties, but despite his family’s wishes he is still a bachelor. His relatives, holding fast to the traditions of their Georgian Jewish heritage, try to arrange a marriage for him by setting him up with a series of eligible young virgins. Zaza, however, is secretly in love with Judith, an opinionated divorcee with a young daughter. As Zaza struggles to decide between tradition and love, Late Marriage manages to become comic, emotional, and erotic all at once, while constantly maintaining respect for both sides of the debate.
In just 14 minutes, Avraham Heffner’s short film successfully refines the confession of a quarrel and reconciliation between an ageing couple in late 1960s Tel Aviv. The heroine’s omnipresent, stream-of-consciousness narration provides a harsh account of life together. And though it is a short film, Slow Down was nonetheless hailed a harbinger of a new style of Israeli filmmaking and storytelling, while director Avraham Heffner himself admitted it was his favourite film. Based on a short story by Simone de Beauvoir (L’âge de discretion).
A young New York woman, devastated to find out that her husband has been cheating on her, decides to hop a plane to Paris to get away. However, she falls asleep on the plane, misses her connection, and winds up in Israel, with no money, no luggage and no friends.
The film is based on the true story of a senior member of the Polish Politburo and his wife who are both abruptly banished from the party. While they struggle to figure out why, having unusual encounters with people they do not know in the process, things start to take a darker turn when the wife is sent to a mental asylum and their 15-year-old daughter is kidnapped.
Tells the story of two women seeking leads to their missing husbands after the end of the Yom Kippur War (1973). A relationship builds between them when each identified her husband in the same blurred image of a foreign newsreel.
A nun, the only survivor of an Indian massacre of a wagon train, is taken in by a cantankerous old gunfighter who helps her to evade the marauding Indians during her attempt to reach Sante Fe. During the arduous journey they slowly develop an unlikely friendship and respect for each other despite Madron initially treating Sister Mary very badly as merely a sex object.