News & Updates: Israeli Film Festival in Los Angeles: Sharon Stone, “Releasing Shuli Sun” and a tribute to Alon Aboutbol
By Israeli Week Editorial Team
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Feature films
DEAD LANGUAGE | Foreign language
Aya waits for her husband in the airport’s arrivals hall, but finds herself picking up a stranger in his place. The immediate intimacy that develops between the two is cut short when the stranger disappears, leaving Aya with a key to his room and an unfulfilled longing that only a stranger can seem to satisfy. Based on the Oscar-nominated film “Aya” in the short film category. 110 minutes / Hebrew, English 2025
EID | Eid
A young Bedouin from Rahat spends his nights in Skype conversations with Dunya, a married Arab actress living in Paris. Dunya is his audience and muse for the play he is writing about his life. When his parents force him to marry a woman he does not know, Eid fears that he will no longer be able to fulfill his dream. Eid will try to change his fate, determine the ending of the play himself and tell it – even if no one will listen / 2024, 90 minutes.
NANDAURI | NANDAURI
In the dead of night, a strange woman arrives in a forgotten village in northern Georgia. Marina, an Israeli lawyer who has spent her life denying her past and identity, returns to Georgia with the goal of bringing back to Israel an 11-year-old boy who was abandoned by his mother, Nino, as a baby. She meets Dato, Nino’s brother, who has cared for the boy his entire life. Despite the hostility she arouses in him, he agrees to help her. The journey of Dato and Marina, two strangers, melts the walls of alienation and anger and changes their perspective on the world and themselves / 2025, 93 minutes.
“Foreign language”
Heaven and Earth
Maya and Aviv Berger have built a perfect life for themselves – a stable relationship, a successful career, and a son they love more than anything. But when a series of medical tests reveals a shocking secret, their world is shaken. As Maya dives into the investigation for the truth, she discovers strange contradictions and half-truths that lead her to an event that happened years earlier. What started as a medical challenge quickly turns into an overwhelming mystery – ending with a big surprise. 2025, 106 minutes.
READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN | Reading Lolita in Tehran
Every Thursday morning, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Azhar Nafisi, a bold and inspiring literature professor, secretly gathers seven of her most dedicated female students to read forbidden Western classics. Taking off their hijabs, they open their hearts as their personal stories mingle with the books they passionately read. As the Revolutionary Guards raid Tehran’s strongholds of culture and resistance, the women in Azhar’s living room sail into realms of freedom, dreams, hopes, expectations and disappointments, with one goal in mind – to express the unstoppable spirit of freedom and find their way from darkness to light, with the help of the liberating power of literature / 108 minutes 2024
Release Shuli-san
The three protagonists – Avihu, Bezalel and Nati – fly to Japan in order to free Shuli – Avihu’s son who was kidnapped by the local yakuza. Together with Batsheva and a robot named “Robuko”, they encounter ninjas, samurai, the Japanese mafia, talking robots, and get involved in Japanese culture in a comical way. The film is one of the biggest blockbusters in the history of Israeli cinema. 2025, 94 minutes
The ring
Arnon Noble (Adir Miller) is a convert who is very close to his mother, a Holocaust survivor – Violetta (Tiki Dayan). He usually drives her to school lectures where she tells the students how she saved her life and the life of her baby with the help of a thin gold ring. When the mother’s health deteriorates, he decides to travel to her hometown and search for the same ring that saved her life. He turns to his investigative wife, with whom he has been out of touch for many years, and suggests that they embark on this journey together. Will the search for the ring be successful? Will the ring save the mother’s life again, and will that ring also save Arnon’s relationship with his family.
“The Ring”
OF DOGS AND MEN | About dogs and people
Early in the morning, 16-year-old Dar sets out back to her home on the kibbutz to search for her dog, who was lost during the Black Sabbath. During her two-day journey, she passes through the memories of the horror that were burned into the place and the faces of the people she meets on her way, and becomes aware of the disaster that is taking place beyond the fence. The film was filmed in November 2023 in the kibbutzim and the border area with the participation of local residents / 2024, 82 minutes
Pink Lady
Lazer and Bati love each other, have three children, and live in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, under strict rules. The happy family’s life changes when Lazer falls victim to blackmail. There are pictures that make Bati doubt her knowledge of her partner. The new discovery throws everyone into a whirlwind of emotions as they struggle to maintain their love, their relationship, and their family. Nir Bergman’s new film presents a comedic drama steeped in humor, pain, and love. The female perspective and authenticity are given to the story by screenwriter Mindy Ehrlich, who grew up in the ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem.
BELLA | Bella
When Shiki realizes that Bella, the curly-haired pigeon he inherited from his father, is worth a fortune – she has already been sent to a wedding in the West Bank, and he has no intention of giving her up. Together with Bilal, his childhood friend, Limor and Nargis, their partners, they embark on the journey of the pigeon Sabbath. While stubbornly trying to avoid politics, in a Trenta without air conditioning, they get stuck at checkpoints in the August heat, ruin a wedding, steal a car, fight, fight, fight, don’t apologize, stutter, get into a Palestinian fight and together revive the pigeon they forgot in the car in the middle of the West Bank. Nothing will stop them from coming with Bella to the beauty show of the Pigeon Breeders’ Association in Jerusalem and selling her to Prince Amirat / 2025, 73 minutes
“Evening with Yehoram Gaon”
CUZ YOU’RE UGLY | Because you’re ugly
As soon as she enters the IDF officer track, Abigail, an angry and insecure soldier, returns to her small, cramped apartment in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem, which she shares with her dysfunctional mother and her angelic little sister. In order to become an officer, Abigail must, at least according to rumors in the military girls’ services, lose her virginity over the weekend, but plans go awry when she discovers that her little sister is pregnant, and that she is the only one capable of handling the problem. In a world where parental care has abandoned her, Abigail has no choice but to take command. Will she be able to break free? 2025 / 73 minutes
A BURNING MAN | Burning Man
A father takes his soldier son to a remote military camp, says goodbye to him, and is overcome with fear that he will never see him again. The father, a man in his mid-fifties, plants himself near the camp fence, refusing to move as if doing so would save his son’s life. The father’s own life is also “stuck” and he is forced to make decisions that will get it moving again. Meanwhile, occasional guests come to him, give him support or real help, and understand his heart. A “travel film” in the parking lot, with an ending that should have been much better / 2025, 93 minutes
Total show
Assi, a failed actor, returns from wartime reserve duty to the southern town where he lives with his family. He dreams of becoming a successful actor, but during the day he teaches drama at a high school and in the evenings he performs at the local cultural hall in a naive cabaret show. An unexpected event makes him famous overnight, but not for the reasons he dreamed of. Reality will force him to choose – whether to bow down and give up on his dream, or gamble on it with all his might / 2024, 91 minutes
The things that were lost
Rona, whose older sister Daniela was murdered in the Nova Festival massacre, is filled with pain and rage. On the eve of the first Memorial Day after the October 7 massacre, she unexpectedly teams up with Oren, a boy who is also bereaved but completely different from her, in a secret plan that will jeopardize the school’s Memorial Day ceremony. 2024, 82 minutes
Two Fingers from Sidon – In Memory of the Late Alon Aboutbul
The film revolves around the character of Gadi (Roni Pinkowitz), a young officer and an outstanding cadet in the officers’ course from the Golani Brigade, who has just graduated from the officers’ course and decides to serve as a platoon commander in the 13th Battalion of the Golani Brigade stationed in Lebanon, when his organized worldview is shattered in the face of Lebanese chaos. 1986, 91 minutes
“We’ll dance again”
Documentaries
A LETTER TO DAVID | A LETTER TO DAVID
A cinematic letter from filmmaker Tom Shoval to David Kunio, a member of Kibbutz Nir-Oz who was kidnapped to Gaza. A decade ago, David starred alongside his twin brother Eitan in Shoval’s first feature film, “The Youth.” Now the director is composing a personal cinematic essay for a friend and creative partner whose fate hangs in the balance / 2025, 74 minutes
Tonight with Yehoram Gaon
Yehoram Gaon has played countless characters – from a cabal to a radio host, from the head of the Mossad to a family man – but they are all intertwined in the story of his life and the story of the country. Like Shoshana Damari, Yossi Banai and Arik Einstein, he is a pillar of Israeli culture, with one difference: he is still with us. The public sees him as a national and Jerusalem monument, but behind the image lies a wild man in his youth, a man of sharp humor, a loner and with sharp social and political opinions. For the first time, he agrees to be revealed in an intimate cinematic performance, in which he will tell his personal story – that of the man, not the legend – to the generations who grew up on him and to young people who no longer know him / 2025, 100 minutes
“Burning Man”
angelic
Efrat and Ofir, young parents, abandoned their son Malachi after he was born due to a rare syndrome he was diagnosed with. Batsheva, a dedicated midwife, decided to act as his foster mother and gave him a new life. Through interviews with the biological parents, the foster parents and the medical team, combined with impressive animation clips, the trauma of abandonment and its impact on all involved unfolds: the parents, who deal with feelings of guilt and yearn for forgiveness; Batsheva, whose devotion is a story of boundless love; and Malachi, who tries to understand his past and find a way to forgive. The film explores human complexity, the limits of parental responsibility and the possibility of atonement in situations of deep pain / 2025, 51 minutes
We will dance again.
A music festival of young people celebrating the values of peace, freedom and love in nature turns into a cruel and merciless scene of terror, leaving behind dead, kidnapped and scarred survivors. The survivors re-create the event, each from their own perspective, and together they are an eternal testament to innocence, youth and beauty, cut short in an instant / 2024, 89 minutes
Between October 6-7, Doron Almog, The Story of a Champion
The story of Major General (Res.) Doron Almog, whose life has been steeped in bereavement for 52 years. His brother was killed on October 7, 1973, in the Yom Kippur War. His son died at the age of 24. Five members of his family were murdered in a suicide bombing in Haifa. Two members of his family were murdered on October 7 in Kibbutz Kfar Gaza and four were kidnapped to Gaza and returned from captivity at the first stroke. Almog, today the chairman of the Agency, is one of the only people to have both won the Israel Prize and lit a torch. Alongside the deep sadness, there is a lot of hope in the film / 2025, 67 minutes
