The Reel Israel

What’s the next best thing to being in Israel? It may be seeing Israel on the silver screen – at the movies.
 
If you live in the Chicago area, you’ll have your chance at the Chicago Festival of Israeli Cinema, coming up October 21-31 at a few area venues. Twenty films and TV productions will be screened, including the acclaimed “Brothers” which tells the story of two estranged brothers – one Orthodox and one secular.
 
In recent years, Israel’s film industry has yielded a consistent stream of critically acclaimed features. They’ve won many international awards, but they have not succeeded in getting the ultimate prize. Last year, the highly praised film “Ajami” snagged an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film – and lost.
 
“Ajami,” written and directed by an Israeli Jew and an Israeli Arab, offers a gritty view of life in a tough, mostly Arab neighborhood of Jaffa, in southern Tel Aviv. It’s a gripping, small story that doesn’t focus on the big picture of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Rather, it shows viewers a slice of Israeli life that few visitors ever see, a world where Jewish-Arab tensions, as well as Arab-Arab tensions, run high.
 
At the Oscars, “Ajami” was edged out by the Argentine entry, “The Secret in Their Eyes.”  The previous year’s Israeli nominee, “Waltz With Bashir,” centered on a soldier who has nightmares about the 1982 Lebanon War, and the nominee from the year before, “Beaufort,” tells the story of a group of soldiers in a fortified bunker in southern Lebanon on the eve of Israel’s 2000 withdrawal from the territory. All were nominated, but none of them won.
 
So is the Israeli film industry a dismal failure? Far from it. Since 1965, when the Israeli smash hit “Sallah Shabati” was nominated (and lost), a total of nine movies from the Land of Milk and Honey have made the cut.  Who knows? Maybe next year’s Oscar-winning Israeli film is about to screen in Chicago.
 
For trailers, a full screening schedule and ticket info, click here. And if you’re not in Chicago, or the festival has ended by the time you read this, Netflix has a good selection of Israeli films.