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Exclusive: Swell Ariel Or, star of Netflix series The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, is set to star in Bleiberg Entertainment’s upcoming war film, Tankistas (working title), about an all-female tank unit responding to the October 7 attack in Israel.

Filming is being lined up for October of this year on the movie, which we first told you about in December 2023.

The film is inspired by true events regarding what is believed to be the first-of-its-kind all-female tank unit which engaged Hamas attackers on October 7, 2023. Ariel Or is to play the unit’s captain, who in the absence of central command, took it upon herself to command three armored vehicles and engage hundreds of Hamas militants for a battle that lasted more than 17 hours. Yarden Toussia-Cohen, whose credits include The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem and Apple’s Tehran, is slated to play the battalion’s commander.

Pic is to be directed by Ayelet Menahemi,...

Los Angeles’ Israel Film Festival has announced its full program, kicking off with Tom Nesher’s directorial debut, “Come Closer” as the fest’s opening night gala. The centerpiece screening is a sneak preview of Erez Tadmor’s “Soda.”

The 36th edition of the festival, which runs Nov. 13-26, will honor Mattel chairman and CEO Ynon Kreiz with the Industry Leadership Award. Actor Shaike Levi will receive the 2024 Iff Lifetime Achievement Award at the Closing Night ceremony.

The festival’s founder and executive director, Meir Fenigstein, leads the event with support from Variety’s CEO and Group Publisher, Michelle Sobrino-Stearns, who serves as chairwoman, and Arnon Milchan, founder of New Regency, as honorary chairman.

Fenigstein said, “The Israel Film Festival has always maintained an environment of mutually respectful discussion and viewpoints as well as nonpartisanship. Our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by the war. Festivalgoers represent the...

For all its many, many faults, 2023 was a banner year for international films. The awards season buzz for global gems like Justine Triet’s French courtroom thriller Anatomy of a Fall (released by Neon stateside), Jonathan Glazer’s German-language Holocaust drama Zone of Interest (A24), Hayao Miyazaki’s Japanese anime The Boy and the Heron (GKids), and J.A. Bayona’s Spanish-language real-life survival tale Society of the Snow (Netflix) only scratches the surface.

Among the many many other foreign highlights from last year are Mubi’s Fallen Leaves and How to Have Sex — the first a laconic triumph by Finnish film master Aki Kaurismäki, the latter a stunning debut by Brit first-timer Molly Manning Walker — Sony Pictures Classics’ The Teachers’ Lounge, a German school drama from director Ilker Çatak and Iranian drama Shayda from director Noora Niasari; Agnieszka Holland’s harrowing The Green Border, about Poland’s treatment of would-be...

Every year since its creation in 1956, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) invites the film industries of various countries to submit their best film for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. The category was previously called the Best Foreign Language Film, but this was changed in April 2019 to Best International Feature Film, after the Academy deemed the word “Foreign” to be outdated.

The award is presented annually by the Academy to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States that contains primarily non-English dialogue. For the 96th Academy Awards, the submitted motion pictures must be first released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline for submissions to the Academy was October 2, 2023, and 92 countries submitted a film. The 15-film shortlist will be announced on December 21, 2023, followed by the official nominations on January 23, 2024.

Here are this edition's Asian Submissions for Best International Feature Film.

Exclusive: The filmmakers behind Israel’s 2024 International Feature Oscar submission are now working on a movie about an all-female Israeli Defence Force (Idf) tank unit which defended against the Hamas terror attacks on October 7.

Ayelet Menahemi, whose feature Seven Blessings won this year’s Ophir Prize in Israel, is slated to direct the film and will be teaming up again with writer-actress Eleanor Sela who is writing the script and also wrote and starred Seven Blessings.

The film is inspired by the true events regarding the first-of-its-kind all-female tank unit who engaged in fierce battles against Hamas attackers on the day of the October 7 massacres. The battle was the first instance in history of an all-female armored unit taking part in combat.

In addition to the battle, the filmmakers tell us the film will also explore the founding of the unit and the struggles the young women combatants faced in...

More than 2,000 Israeli film and TV industry figures have signed the letter.

More than 2,000 Israeli film and TV industry figures have penned an open letter to the international entertainment community urging their support in a push to release hostages taken by Hamas during the terror attacks on October 7.

Filmmakers Hagai Levi, Ayelet Menahemi, Ari Folman, Joseph Cedar, Michal Vinik, Jasmine Kainy, Eliran Peled and Nadav Lapid joined Euphoria creator Ron Leshem, Israel Film Fund CEO Noa Regev and a slew of other executives and talent for the letter addressed to “our dearest friends in the international film and television community...

Predicting the eventual five Oscar nominees for Best International Feature is made difficult by the three-step process that begins after the October 2, 2023 deadline for countries to submit entries. To be part of the selection process for this category, which was called Best Foreign Language Film before 2020, requires a great deal of dedication. (Scroll down for the most up-to-date 2024 Oscars Best International Feature predictions.)

In the days following the deadline for submissions, the academy determines each film’s eligibility. Then the several hundred academy members who serve on the International Feature screening committee are divided into groups and required to watch all their submissions over a six-week period that ends in early December. Their top 15 vote-getters will make it to the next round. That list of semi-finalists will be revealed on December 21, 2023.

These 15 films will be made available to the entire academy membership who can cast ballots for the final five...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Ayelet Menahemi’s family comedy Seven Blessings swept the board at Israel’s Ophir Awards on Sunday evening, triumphing in nine categories including in best film.

As the winner of the best film prize, the movie will automatically be put forward as Israel’s submission to the Best International Film category of the 2024 Academy Awards.

Set in Jerusalem in the early 1990s, the film revolves around an eventful Jewish Moroccan family wedding and the traditional blessings that are pronounced during the ceremony, again at the reception, and then on the next seven nights, with loved ones hosting special dinners in the couple’s honor.

Behind the facade of joie de vivre and togetherness, there are secrets, lies, and a painful old wound from the past that threatens to burst the bubble of their lives.

Added to the mix is a comedy of errors and misinterpretation from numerous members of the family speaking multiple languages,...

Schory was head of the Israel Film Fund for 21 years.

Katriel Schory, former long-time head of the Israel Film Fund, has received a lifetime achievement award from the Israel Academy of Film and Television.

Schory was presented with the award at a special event on August 27, ahead of the Ophir Awards ceremony on September 10 – the main ceremony for the Israeli Academy.

“Israeli cinema would not look the same without Katriel Schory,” read a statement from the Academy, which selected the executive for the award “for his work and public achievements over the past 30 years, with great respect and endless appreciation.

The Nw Film Center along with the Institute for Judaic Studies brings you the 17th Annual Portland Jewish Film Festival.

The big film this year might just be another chance to see Waltz with Bashir on the big screen. Some feel this was the best animated film of 2008 … yes, even better than Wall-e. Others think it was the top documentary.

Here’s a complete list of films … each is single admission.

April 16 Thur 7 Pm

Max, Minsky And Me

Germany 2007

Director: Anna Justice

Nelly, a precocious 12-year-old, lives in Berlin with her German Christian dad and American Jewish mom, who is very eager for Nelly to crack down on her bat mitzvah studies. But her twin obsessions—astronomy and her distant fantasy heartthrob, 16-year-old Edouard, Prince of Luxembourg and fellow stargazer—occupy all of her time. Nor is she much interested in the simple-minded girls’ basketball team, which fills the lives of her schoolmates.

Santa Barbara International Film FestivalNorma Prods./EZ Films

SANTA BARBARA -- East meets the Western Wall in "Noodle", an engaging odd-couple comedy about a widowed El Al flight attendant whose deported Chinese cleaning lady leaves her with a little souvenir in the form of her young son. It recently screened at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Although such higher-profile Israeli imports as "The Band's Visit" and "Jellyfish" have been receiving recent attention, "Noodle", which also has been making the film fest rounds (it nabbed the Jury Special Grand Prize honors at the Montreal World Film Festival), is the kind of universal crowd-pleaser that works as effectively in English as it does in Hebrew and Mandarin.

In other words, it should eventually find its way to a domestic distributor, especially considering its American remake potential.

Given that the melancholy Miri (Mili Avital) has in fact lost two husbands to combat, it's understandable that she has shut herself off emotionally rather than risking being hurt again.

There's no shortage of distraction in her crowded Tel Aviv apartment, which she shares with her judgmental, sarcastic sister, Gila (a scene-stealing Anat Waxman, who took home an Israeli Academy Award for her performance), whose own marriage to Miri's supportive colleague, Izzy (Alon Aboutboul), is seriously deteriorating.

But though Miri, 39, leads a worldly existence thanks to her globe-trotting job, she finds herself at loose ends when her maid asks her to watch her withdrawn 6-year-old son (the expressive Baoqui Chen) for an hour but never returns to fetch him.

It turns out the illegal immigrant was deported back to Beijing. The boy knows little Hebrew and even less English, but ultimately the two manage to find a way into each other's hearts.

Formulaic stuff, to be sure, but when done as competently as "Noodle", it's a formula that can't miss.

Directing from a script written with Shemi Yarhin, Ayelet Menahemi keeps everything moving at a nimble pace while holding the sentimental aspect in check thanks to the ample humor, especially where the witty Waxman is concerned.

Her dysfunctional sibling relationship with Avital lends the picture a sassy bite, even as the bond between herself and the boy she calls "Noodle" (which is at least a bit better than his earlier, decidedly un-PC nickname, Mao Tse-tung) follows a comfortably well-traveled path.

MONTREAL -- "Ben X", Belgian director Nic Balthazar's portrait of a mildly autistic boy bullied at school, took top honors at the 31st annual Montreal World Film Festival, which wrapped Monday.

Balthazar's directorial debut earned the audience award and shared the juried Grand Prix of Americas prize as the top festival film with French director Claude Miller's "A Secret", the tale of Jewish family during and after World War II.

"Ben X", which had Canadian and U.S. distributors swirling with buying interest Monday, also grabbed the festival's Ecumenical Prize for combining artistic merit with the exploration of ethical, social and spiritual values, according to jury members.

Other winners at the competitive Montreal festival included the jury's Special Grand Prize to Isreali director Ayelet Menahemi's "Noodle", a film about a lonely Tel Aviv flight attendant, while Swiss director Jacob Berger was awarded the best director prize for "1 Day", a film capturing a day in the life of a family.

Spanish director Ray Loriga's "Teresa" received the jury's award for best artistic contribution.