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After teaming with Noah Baumbach to direct one of the best-ever documentaries about filmmaking, De Palma, Jake Paltrow is back with a new feature. June Zero is a vividly textured telling of the preparations for the 1962 execution of Adolf Eichmann through a triptych of perspectives––a Jewish Moroccan prison guard, an Israeli police investigator (and Holocaust survivor), and a clever and precocious 13-year-old Libyan immigrant. In advance of the June 28 release from Cohen Media Group, we’re pleased to exclusively reveal a series of influences the director has programmed for NYC’s Quad Cinema.

“Origin Stories: Jake Paltrow’s Notes on June Zero,” which runs June 21-27, features seven films that informed and influenced June Zero, with titles spanning humanist deep-cuts of world cinema from the likes of Miloš Forman and Abbas Kiarostami to underscreened classics of 1970s Israeli cinema. Watch the exclusive trailer for the series below, along with...

Festival reveals 13 features set to receive their world premieres.

Jerusalem Film Festival (Jff) has revealed its line-up of Israeli films for its 39th edition, which includes world premieres for anticipated features by Michal Vinik and Yona Rozenkier.

A total of eight features have been selected for the Haggiag Competition for Israeli features while seven titles make up the Diamond Competition for Israeli documentaries.

Scroll down for full list of titles

The Haggiag Competition includes the world premiere of Valeria Gets Married by Israeli filmmaker Vinik, who previously made waves internationally with her 2015 drama Blush about a relationship between two Israeli schoolgirls.

The Jerusalem Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its Israeli feature film competition as well as all the other local productions selected to screen in its 39th edition, running 21-31.

The event returns to its traditional July dates for the first time since 2019 this year, after the Covid-19 pandemic forced it online in 2020 and pushed it into August and prevented it from inviting international guests in 2021.

This edition is being piloted by Jerusalem Cinematheque manager Roni Mahadav-Levin and artistic director Elad Samorzik, following the departure earlier this year of longtime cinematheque and festival director Noa Regev to head up the Israel Film Fund. Her replacement will be decided after this year’s edition.

World premieres in the Israeli competition include Michal Vinik’s drama Valeria Is Getting Married about two Ukrainian sisters who travel to Israel for marriage. It is Vinik’s first solo feature since 2015 festival breakout Blush.

The Jerusalem Film Festival is gearing up for a late August start, with celebrated Cannes title “Where is Anne Frank?” set to open the 38th edition of the fest.

Directed by Ari Folman, the animated film centres on Kitty, Anne Frank’s imaginary friend whom her diary was addressed to, who magically comes to life at the family home in Amsterdam and sets out on a quest to find her.

“Where is Anne Frank?” will kick off the festival at the Sultans Pool Amphitheatre, to an audience of 5,000, on Aug. 24. The event runs through to Sept. 4.

Elsewhere, the festival has also revealed its line-up of Israeli films. Altogether, 13 feature films will play in the two main Israeli film competitions. The total sum of prizes that will be awarded in the various festival competitions is Nis 1 million.

The Haggiag Competition for Israeli feature films will include Hadas Ben-Aroya’s “All Eyes Off Me...

Mubi's retrospective Uri Zohar Trilogy is showing July - October, 2020 in France.Above: Three Days and a ChildA charismatic actor and director, popular television star and icon of bohemian Tel Aviv, Uri Zohar set off shock waves in Israel’s secular society when he decided to become a practicing, observant Jew. Since that time, in the late 1970s, he has become an ultra-Orthodox rabbi and has denied his cinematic past, describing it as a dark period in his life.Yet his works have a life of their own. Many of the movies he directed, starting in the mid-’60s—some of which have become part of the canon of Israeli cinema—reveal extraordinary talent, inspiration and sensitivity, and they function as a tragicomic, pitiless and sometimes disillusioned mirror of Israeli society of that era. Born in 1935, Zohar was the main figure of the New Sensibility, this Israeli cinema movement...

Film is considered one of the most important in Israel’s cinematic history.

Following last year’s festival screening of Uri Zohar’s restored Three Days And A Child, Jerusalem Cinematheque and Tel Aviv-based technical facility Realworks Studios have collaborated on Israeli war classic Avanti Popolo (1986), from late director Rafi Bukai.

Marking 30 years since the film’s original release, the digital restoration will be screened for the first time at the Jerusalem Film Festival on July 12, with cast and crew in attendance including the film’s lead actor Salim Dau and Bukai’s widow Mayan.

The dark comedy follows two Egyptian soldiers stranded in the Sinai desert after the Six-Day War — now caught inside the new borders of Israel — who are desperate to return home.

Originally Bukai’s graduate film from Tel Aviv University, the feature version went on to be widely acclaimed, and is still studied in the country’s film schools.

“It is a very...

A total 120 projects from Morocco to Syria are set to be supported over the next three years by the new $2.2m (€2m) Icam programme co-funded the European Union.

Speaking to ScreenDaily, Catherine Buresi, one of Icam’s initiators, explained that “the idea was to create a programme to support the development of projects, training measures and networking events as a forum for producers from the nine Arab countries”.

Icam (Investing in Culture & Arts in the South Mediterranean) started operations from headquarters in Cairo at the Noon Foundation earlier this year and will run for three years until April 2018.

The eligible countries are Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

According to Buresi, the project is working with local partners throughout the region such as Jordan’s Luminus Media, Egypt/Cyprus-based Semat for production & distribution, Morocco’s Rabii Films Productions, Algeria’s M.D. Ciné as well as the non-profit association Cap Network in Belgium...

I'm writing this the day after first posting this entry. I now regret it. The point I make about artists is perfectly valid but I realize I wasn't prepared with enough facts about the events leading up to the Festival's decision to showcase Tel Aviv in the City-to-City section. I thought of it as an innocent goodwill gesture, but now realize it was part of a deliberate plan to "re-brand" Israel in Toronto, as a pilot for a larger such program. The Festival should never have agreed to be used like this. It was naive for the plan's supporters to believe it would have the effect they hoped for. The original entry remains below. The first 50 or so comments were posted before these regrets.

¶ The tumult continues here about the decision to spotlight Tel Aviv in the City-to-City sidebar program of the Toronto Film Festival. The protesters say the festival...

Toronto -- First a single filmmaker withdrew his short film from the Toronto International Film Festival over its spotlight on Tel Aviv. Now the artists are piling on.

Toronto is set to open next week with a widening artist protest and possible boycott over its spotlight on Israel and its filmmakers.

British director Ken Loach, Jane Fonda, Wallace Shawn, musician David Byrne and actor Danny Glover are among 50 directors, writers and activists who have signed an open letter to the Toronto festival that went online Thursday.

The document, titled "The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation," alleges that Toronto, "whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine."

  The list of international filmmakers signing on to the declaration includes U.S. producer Joslyn Barnes, distributor Cornelius Moore, screenwriter Jeremy Pikser and Canadian documentary maker Mark Achbar, whose films have screened in Toronto.

Middle Eastern filmmakers joining the protest include Egypt's Ahmad Abdalla,...

Toronto -- The Toronto International Film Festival is to mix up moving image platforms in September as it presents an Isabella Rossellini installation, a cell phone-inspired movie from Don McKellar and multichannel video works from Candice Breitz as part of its Future Projections sidebar.

Toronto said Tuesday that it booked Rossellini to present "Green Porno: Scandalous Sea," which transforms Sundance Channel-produced shorts about ocean-borne sexual high-jinks into a sculptural installation, while Breitz will screen "The Origins of Factum," a video portrait of identical twins.

Thai filmmaker and visual artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul will be in Toronto with "Phantoms of Nabua, an installation that recalls recurring themes in his earlier feature films, which include "Blissfully Yours" and "Tropical Malady."

Also festival-bound is "Picture Start," from director of photography veteran Christopher Doyle ("Happy Together"), which explores how movie images evolve from when a director yells "action" on set to postproduction.

And...