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Top Israeli director Talya Lavie is developing “Seven Eyes,” a feature film based on the gripping story of the female lookout soldiers who were based at the Israel-Gaza border on Oct. 7, when Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians.

Entirely staffed by women, that Idf “lookout” unit is stationed by the Nahal Oz Outpost in Southern Israel, near the village which was decimated by Hamas. In the months preceding the attack, these female soldiers consistently reported suspicious activities, indicating that Hamas terrorists were preparing for an attack, said Lavie, an alumna of the Sundance Directors and Screenwriters Lab.

Of the 24 lookout soldiers who were stationed in Nahal Oz on Oct. 7, 15 were killed during the attack, seven were abducted by Hamas into Gaza and two survived. Lavie said the film will follow fictional characters but will be based on true events.

In “Zero Motivation,” one of Israel’s biggest B.O. hits of all times,...

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.

In the good traditions of weddings there is something old, new, borrowed and blue about the second feature from Israeli director Talya Lavie, whose debut Zero Motivation - an enjoyably acidic M*A*S*H like black comedy about Israeli national service - won the top prize at Tribeca but never made it to general release in the UK.

Old, is perhaps too strong a word, but her latest certainly borrows from a fine tradition of films about lovers set over the course of a single day or night, although it leans towards the feisty end of the market occupied by the likes of 2 Days In Paris rather than the more loved up Richard Linklater approach. Newlyweds Eleanor (Avigail Harari) - her red shoes a hint of fireworks to come - and Noam (Ran Danker) have just arrived at their palatial honeymoon suite on a cloud of loved-up bliss - "You're so sweet,...

Is a wedding the happy ending of a love story, or just the beginning? And is it even possible to get really ready to the moment? These are some of the questions risen by Israeli female director Talya Lavie in her sophomore work “Honeymood” which follows the 2004 debut, the record-breaking box office hit “Zero Motivation”, a film following two utterly demotivated young women in the Israely Army, assigned to a remote military outpost. The work earned Lavie the top prize at Tribeca in 2014, as well as the Nora Ephron Prize and six Israeli Academy Awards. Of course, it also set the bar very high for her following effort.

“Honeymood” is screening at the BFI London Film Festival

The Wedding reception has just finished and newlywed Eleanor (Avigail Harari) and Noam (Ran Danker) open the doors of the Grand suite in the Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem, ready to spend there their first night as a married couple.

Israel’s Yes Studios (“Fauda”) has unveiled a first look clip and photos of the anticipated third season of its hit Netflix drama “Shtisel,” and has announced two new shows, “The Chef” and “Embezzlement.”

“Shtisel,” whose first two seasons are available on Netflix, follows a Haredi family living in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem reckoning with love, loss and the doldrums of daily life.

Created and written by Ori Elon and Yehonatan Indursky, the series stars Michael Aloni, Doval’e Glickman, Neta Riskin, Sasson Gabai and Shira Haas, the star of Netflix’s “Unorthodox” who is nominated for an Emmy Award. “Shtisel” was produced by Abot Hameiri, a Fremantle company, and is directed by Alon Zingman.

The third season of “Shtisel” picks up four years after the events of the previous season. Comprising nine episodes, season three of the show started filming last month and will be airing on Yes TV in Israel later this year.

Lavie is best known for her first feature, Tribeca prize winner Zero Motivation.

On the eve of the Efm, London-based WestEnd Films has snapped up worldwide rights to Honeymood, a romantic comedy from Talya Lavie. the director of Zero Motivation.

Honeymood is a romantic comedy set over the course of one night in Jerusalem. A bride and groom arrive at a lavish hotel suite after their wedding. Instead of relaxing and enjoying a romantic night, they get into a fight that soon develops into a dazed, urban odyssey, confronting them with past loves, repressed doubts, and the lives they have left behind.

Prizes go to Mihal Brezis and Oded Binnun’s Dead Language and Maya Dreifuss’ Highway 65.

Dead Language by husband-and-wife filmmakers Mihal Brezis and Oded Binnun clinched the new $18,000 Jerusalem Foundation Award at the 14th edition of Jerusalem Film Festival’s (Jff) Pitch Point event, established to connect Israeli filmmakers with international partners.

The story follows a 27-year-old woman who, while waiting for her husband at the airport, ends up driving a complete stranger to his hotel after he mistakes her for his assigned driver – a random, short-lived encounter that shakes up her life.

It is Brezis and Binnun’s second...

Haut et Court TV, the Paris-based production company behind “The Young Pope” and the original series “The Returned,” is tapping into Israel’s vibrant talent pool to partner on ambitious series, including “Possessions” and “Fertile Crescent,” which are both currently shooting.

“Fertile Crescent,” which just started lensing in Belgium with Melanie Thierry (“Memoir of War”), Félix Moati (“Sink or Swim”) and James Purefoy (“Rome”), was recently acquired by Hulu for the U.S. and Arte in France.

The show was created by Maria Feldman (“False Flag”), Eitan Mansuri (“When Heroes Fly”), Amit Cohen (“False Flag”) and Ron Leshem (“Euphoria”). Directed by Oded Ruskin (“False Flag”), the series centers on a seemingly picture-perfect French family shattered by the death of their estranged daughter in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem. Years after her tragic death, Antoine, her younger brother, is convinced he saw her in a TV program showing footage of female...

Schory said decision is his as Israeli industry battles controversial state reforms.

Katriel Schory, the respected long-time head of the Israel Film Fund (Iff), has announced he is planning to step down in early 2019.

“After 20 years of serving as the executive director of the Israel Film Fund, I notified the board of directors of my wish to step down, early next year,” Schory said in a letter, due to be mailed out to friends and contacts in the international film industry on Monday.

The industry veteran emphasised he will not be walking away from the Israeli film industry, which he...

The Current Love of My Life

Director: Talya Lavie

Writer: Talya Lavie

Israeli director Talya Lavie scored great success with her 2014 debut Zero Motivation, a richly characterized, darkly comedic portrait of young female soldiers on a remote desert base, picking up Best Narrative feature out of Tribeca.

Continue reading...

Exclusive: Trio of films to explore theme of the “the past”.

Israeli film-maker Avi Nesher is due to start shooting the first film in a trilogy of works devoted to the theme of ‘the past’ this autumn.

“They’re all based on really strange true stories,” Nesher told ScreenDaily.

“In Past Life, the past is a villain, in Past Tense it is a mystery and in the final film it will be a lover.

“I was a film critic before I became a director. I figure that if I invent anything I’m probably ripping off old movies I once saw which is why I like to work with real-life flights of fantasy,” continued Nesher, whose credits include The Wonders(2013), The Matchmaker (2010) and The Secrets (2007).

“The past is a complicated issue in Israel. We deal with a Jewish past and an Israeli past. Sometimes they’re parallel, sometimes they’re the same, sometimes they’re...

According to local filmmakers, the recent suppression of documentary Beyond The Fear is just one episode in a quickening erosion of artistic freedom in Israel.

As Nanni Moretti’s Mia Madre began to roll on the opening night of the Jerusalem Film Festival in the picturesque Sultan’s Pool amphitheatre in early July, another screening was kicking off just metres above the spectators’ heads.

On a terrace overlooking the event, some 50 film-makers and producers had gathered for a protest screening of Maria Kravchenko and the late Herz Frank’s Beyond The Fear.

They included The Kindergarten Teacher director Nadav Lapid; Keren Yedaya, who won Cannes’ Camera d’Or for her debut work Or; Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, whose credits include the award-winning The Law In These Parts; and Shlomi Elkabetz, co-director of the Golden Globe-nominated Gett: The Trial Of Viviane Amsalem which premiered in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in May 2014 and went on to win best film at...

Read More: Tribeca Winner 'Zero Motivation' to Screen At The Wassaic Project Film Festival The Wassaic Project has announced its lineup for this year's Wassaic Project Summer Film Festival, which includes Sundance and SXSW feature-length films, as well as shorts selected by the Wassaic Project and Jason Sondhi of Vimeo Staff Picks and Short of the Week. 30 festival attendees will also have the chance to attend a private viewing and discussion with directors and producers of an unknown "work-in-progress" film. In this film workshop, guests will have the chance to learn from the directors and producers' process and see film development first-hand. The 2015 Wassaic Project Film Festival runs July 31-August 2 in Wassaic, New York. Head to the Wassaic Project's website for more information about the event. Check out the synopses of this year's films below, courtesy of the Wassaic Project:  Feature Films "Art and Craft" - Director: Sam Cullman "Art.

Producer Shlomi Elkabetz is onboard for director Maysaloun Hamoud’s debut feature.

Israeli film-maker and producer Shlomi Elkabetz is set to produce Maysaloun Hamoud’s feature In Between, an unprecedented portrait of young Palestinian women living life to the full in Tel Aviv.

The film will revolve around two party animal Palestinian girls hailing from villages in Northern Israel – Leila and Salma — whose liberal lifestyles in Tel Aviv are disrupted by the arrival of Noor, a devout religious Muslim girl from the of Umm al-Fahm, an Arab town situated within Israeli borders.

In the backdrop, the film will explore the reality of being a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship.

“The way Leila and Salma are living is breaking all the taboos of traditional conservative Arab society,” explained Hamoud at a presentation of the project at the Pitch Point event at the Jerusalem Film Festival on Monday.

“They choose to leave traditional village life because they want to be free...

Spiro chief Eitan Mansuri will be in Toronto with final draft of Lavie’s The Current Love Of My Life.

Talya Lavie’s second feature The Current Love Of My Life, a New York-set comedy in which secular and orthodox worlds collide, is moving towards a 2016 shoot, according to producer Eitan Mansuri of Tel Aviv’s Spiro Films.

Lavie’s debut Zero Motivation, which captured the ennui of a group of female army recruits, became the best-performing Israeli film at the local box office when it was released last year.

“It’s got the backing of the Israel Film Fund and now we’re trying to figure out whether it makes sense to go with North American partners for the financing or build a European co-production,” Mansuri said of Lavie’s new project.

He plans to attend Toronto and the project forum of the Independent Filmmaker Project in New York in September as part of the decision-making...

Every day, more and more films are added to the various streaming services out there, ranging from Netflix to YouTube, and are hitting the airwaves via movie-centric networks like TCM. Therefore, sifting through all of these pictures can be a tedious and often times confounding or difficult ordeal. But, that’s why we’re here. Every week, Joshua brings you five films to put at the top of your queue, add to your playlist, or grab off of VOD to make your weekend a little more eventful. Here is this week’s top five, in this week’s Armchair Vacation.

5. Ballet 422 (VOD)

There are very few things in this world quite like the birth of a new creative venture. Be it the making of a film, the writing of a new novel or the painstaking artistry that goes into the crafting of a new sculpture, watching an artist or...

‘Les Loups’ is the first great Quebec film of 2015

The dark unforgiving waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the mouth of the St. Lawrence river provide the backdrop to Les Loups, a beautifully crafted melodrama. Set in a small island Quebec town during the spring thaw, a stranger arrives during the height of the controversial seal hunts. Vibrant and mysterious, many suspect that Elie, the young woman from Montreal, is not who she says and is likely a reporter or an activist bent on portraying the townsfolk in a bad light… read the full article.

‘The Phantom Menace’ and the goodness of Star Wars nostalgia

A long time ago…in 1999, the pop culture zeitgeist was caught in a Star Wars maelstrom. Writer-director George Lucas and his crack creative team had gone back to the well that made space opera cinema what it is known and appreciated as today by producing...

I spoke with Zero Motivation director Talya Lavie about mixing genres and surrealism in her debut feature film

Neal Dhand: Did you always consider this a comedy? There are some rather dark moments – sexual violence and suicide – that could easily move this into darker territory. Were they always in the script?

Talya Lavie: The film is defined as a “dark comedy”, but while writing the script, I didn’t want to constrain myself in a specific genre. I put a large scale of emotions in it and the scenes you mentioned were there from the first draft of the script. I was actually interested in mixing different spirits in this film: humor, sadness, nonsense and tragedy.

Nd: Do you consider those scenes mentioned above to be unique to a female-military perspective?

Tl: Since the main characters of the film are women and I’m a female director, I...

When is a gimmick not a gimmick? When it underscores strong storytelling rather than distracting from a bad script. It was easy to think of the selling points behind “Boyhood” (actors age in real time during a production spread out over a dozen years); “Locke” (movie centered around one man in a car making phone calls) or “Birdman” (camera and editing tricks employed to make the film look like one continuous take) as mere hoopla – and then we saw the movies.

Not all of the year’s best films employed such razzle-dazzle, but it was heartening to know that in...

Israeli Film Critics Association chooses Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel as best international film.

The Israeli Film Critics Association selected its best films of 2014. Zero Motivation, written and directed by Talya Lavie, was named best film of the year. Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, distributed in Israel by Forum Film, was named best international film of 2014.

Sasson Gabai was chosen as best actor for Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem. Dana Ivgy was named best actress for her portrayal of Zohar, a disgruntled soldier in Zero Motivation.

Newcomer Talya Lavie was chosen as best director and best screenwriter of the year for her debut film Zero Motivation. A supporting actress in the film, Tamara Klingon, was named Discovery of the Year.

The critics gave their Artistic Achievement Award went to cinematographer Nadav Hekselman for his work on Funeral at Noon.

Films had to be released in Israel between January and mid-December this year...

"An exciting new original voice in cinema, who happens to be really funny, intelligent, and female." Yep, that's our review quoted in the new trailer for "Zero Motivation." The directorial debut of Talya Lavie (who we placed on our Breakthrough Directors of 2014 list), which plays like a mash-up of "M.A.S.H.," "The Last Detail," and "Office Space," "Zero Motivation" is a hilarious look at tedium, bureaucracy, and red tape as seen through the lens of the slow moving Israeli army. And in particular, a unit of young, female soldiers who are relegated to the doom of boredom in a human resources office. Based on Lavie's own experiences, "Zero Motivation" is extremely distinct, particular, sharp, and wryly observed.  The film won the Narrative Feature and Nora Ephron prizes at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year, and Lavie's been on our radar ever since. We cannot wait to see what she cooks up.

Film fans may perhaps be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu this week, as The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 1 once again emerged triumphant at the weekend box office for the third straight weekend, continuing to assert the late year commercial blockbuster power of the Hunger Games franchise. Netting another 21.6 million, the third entry in the franchise’s quadrilogy took the top spot in what turned out to be the second-worst earning weekend of the year at the domestic box office. The only other movie to earn over $10 million on the weekend was Dreamworks’ Penguins of Madagascar, which once again finished in second place, this time with $11.1 million.

The overall drop in box office profitability also resulted in Horrible Bosses 2 climbing up from its 6th place finish last week to 3rd place this week, despite a drop in revenue of almost 50%, as it ended with $8.6 million. The...

Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon in the film adaptation of Cheryl Strayed‘s memoir of a life-changing hike, blazed a trail into solid box office territory, opening in 21 theaters over the weekend with a $630K gross. The feature, which Witherspoon also produced under her Pacific Standard label, was easily the weekend’s biggest newcomer with a $30K per-theater average. Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game, meanwhile, once again took the weekend’s highest PTA numbers as it added locations in its second week.

The Searchlight title opened in New York and L.A. Wednesday, expanding for the weekend to 21 theaters in 7 markets. Director Jean-Marc Vallée‘s previous film, Dallas Buyers Club, opened in November 2013 with a nearly $29K PTA, and went on to cume nearly $27.3M and three Oscars, including Best Actor for Matthew McConaughey. Searchlight said it plans to keep Wild hiking through theaters for a lengthy period to come.

Writer-director Talya Lavie was inspired by her own time in the Israeli Defense Force and paints a picture of day-dreaming, gender politics and high heels

If you show a staple gun in the first act it has to go off in the third. But that’s about the only dramatic principle to which the characters in Zero Motivation adhere. Normally that would be a problem, seeing as how this film is set in the army, but it’s not like we’re on the battle lines. Writer-director Talya Lavie drew from her own personal experience in the Israeli Defense Forces, setting her first feature in the dullest administrative office in a remote desert base. The elevator pitch “Girls meets M*A*S*H” may seem a tad reductive, but it’s apt. The angst is the same though the specifics, and urgency, has changed.

The Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge of Paper and Shredding,...

Following the success of last year’s Dallas Buyers Club, director Jean-Marc Vallée returns with another high profile title and a big Hollywood star that should easily be this week’s Specialty Box Office go-getter, Wild. Starring Reese Witherspoon, who also produces with Bruna Papandrea under their Pacific Standard label, the Fox Searchlight title will open in a comparatively wider release by this weekend (it opened in NY and La Wednesday) than some of its more recent high-profile brethren including last week’s The Imitation Game or last month’s Foxcatcher. Liv Ullmann returns to the director’s chair after a long absence with her take on Strindberg’s Miss Julie with Jessica Chastain, Collin Farrell and Samantha Morton via Wrekin Hill Entertainment. IFC Films and Magnolia Pictures will each open features Comet and Life Partners respectively which have at their center two people in an intense relationship. And two...

School teams with Arp Selection for award; Cameron Bailey, Alberto Barbera among jury.

A $500,000 film fund for first-time filmmakers has been launched in Israel for graduates of Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel Film School.

The school has teamed up with French producer and distributor Arp Selection to invest $100,000 in one feature project a year for five years. Both partners will contribute $50,000 a year, with Arp taking French distribution rights to the project.

The winning script will be selected by an international jury comprised of Cameron Bailey, artistic director of the Toronto International Film Festival, Alberto Barbera, director of the Venice Film Festival, Michèle Halberstadt of Arp Sélection, France), and Renen Schorr, founding director of the Sam Spiegel Film School, in the first year.

They will announce their decision on March 24, 2015, as part of the School’s Silver Jubilee celebrations.

“Initiating a platform like this for our alumni is an exciting and special moment for us,” said Schorr...

Band of Girls: Lavie’s Acerbic, Confident Debut

Exacerbated ennui is explored to comedic effect in Tayla Lavie’s striking directorial debut, Zero Motivation, which explores life on an Israeli military base through the perspective of several female soldiers. Groups of humans not taken seriously and treated with demeaning abandon tend to disengage from rational behaviors, and Lavie explores the rampant pettiness born out of being kept in certain positions without any opportunity to grow. Some have criticized Lavie for abstaining from composing the film as a more complicated and transgressive portrait of the reductive nature of war, in general. Coming from an area where cinematic offerings are saturated and inflected with the constant, aggravated unrest transpiring there, Lavie’s film is already a subtly wicked statement, and her focus on the trivialities of one group of women on one military base serves as the subtle microcosm for the enduring...

A “Staple” Female-centric Portrait: Lavie Adds Dark Charm to Bureaucratic Military Milieu

With a subject so entrenched with weight and political correctness, there seems to be unspoken set of expectations that come with the territory of any narrative involving the testosterone and blood-drenched subjects of military, war, and combat. These expectations shape but also restrict the genre itself: as a romantic comedy is to the female audience, so is the war film to the male one. By creating a darkly comedic template and by utilizing a fully-fledged female ensemble, Talya Lavie artfully subverts such expectations in Zero Motivation, and by doing so, redefines the boundaries of the genre and the potential of its reach without sacrificing great storytelling.

At an isolated Israeli base camp in the middle of the desert, best friends Daffi (Nelly Tagar) and Zohar (Dana Ivgy) struggle to find their footing in a place that only seems...

This weekend, Reese Witherspoon looks for salvation on a 1000-mile hike in the docudrama "Wild," a snake expert will be eaten alive -- and fished out in one piece (hopefully) -- on "Eaten Alive" Sunday night at 9 p.m. on Discovery Channel, the British sci-fi series "Black Mirror" examines the dark side of technology on Netflix, and "American Horror Story: Coven," the third season of the popular series, will be available to stream on Netflix, too, beginning this weekend.

Also in theaters this weekend: "The Pyramid" follows an archaeological team hunted by an insidious creature after attempting to unlock the secrets of a lost pyramid. In "Zero Motivation," a unit of female Israeli soldiers at a remote desert base bide their time as they count down the minutes until they can return to civilian life. "Pioneer" follows a diver (Wes Bentley) at the beginning of the 1980's Norwegian Oil Boom...

The thing about hating your job and not giving a shit is that it can happen to anyone, anytime — it might even explain the longueurs late in most two-term presidencies. In Talya Lavie's bored, biting comedy Zero Motivation, aggrieved ennui hits right in the heart of the Intifada.

Not that war ever touches the go-nowhere days depicted here. Conscripted Israeli BFFs Zohar (Dana Ivgy) and Daffi (Nelly Tagar) are over it all in ways we immediately recognize, from the movies and from life: They're young folks tasked with meaningless work by authority too clueless to catch all the jokes spitballed at it. Officer Rama (Shani Klein) browbeats her Minesweeper-playing subordinates to stop giggling and take care of their office busywork. Flustered, early on, Rama demands that the ...

This is a reprint of our review from the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. Satirical comedies set in the military aren’t aplenty in cinema. Sure, you have “M.A.S.H” and “Stripes,” and “Dr. Strangelove” qualifies to some extent (though it’s more of black comedy about war), and “The Last Detail” (which really veers towards drama, ultimately), but classics in the genre are few and far between. Even more uncommon, perhaps never before seen, is an Israeli military movie told from a female point of view as written and directed by a female filmmaker. And so director Talya Lavie’s “Zero Motivation” is a rare breed indeed. But so what. Does it actually do something beyond that? Absolutely. Lavie’s picture is a unique, sharply observed and hilarious look at the monotony of enlistment, the ridiculousness of subordination and chain-of-command concepts, and the utter boredom of carrying out meaningless orders.

Zero Motivation The Boston Jewish Film Festival begins its 26th edition tonight (November 5) with a screening of Run Boy Run - the story of nine-year-old who flees the Warsaw ghetto in 1942.

This year, there are 39 films from 14 countries, including Cuba, Greece, Morocco, and the Philippines, and of course many from Israel and the United States. Seventeen are New England premieres.

Artistic director Amy Geller said: “We are committed to bringing our audiences the very best films with Jewish content from around the globe, both fiction and documentary.

“Bjff 2014 has a stellar line-up of films and related events - over 35 guest speakers, moderated discussions, after-parties, and in-person visits from filmmakers, actors, and other artists.

“Our festival strives to bring together a passionate Jewish community as well as movie lovers of all faiths and walks of life. And of all ages.”

Among the festival highlights this year is the Freshflix strand - a new programme.

Each year, there are a handful of films that don’t quite seem to get the attention they deserve. Maybe they don’t star the right people or premiere at the right festivals, or maybe they suffer from plain bad luck. Whatever the case, the Tribeca Film Festival entry Zero Motivation is up there for me as one […]

The post ‘Zero Motivation’ Trailer: ‘Office Space’ Meets the Idf appeared first on /Film.

Zero Motivation, an Israeli comedy that won the Narrative Prize award at the Tribeca Film Festival, has released a trailer for the Us. The film won six Israeli Film Academy awards including Best Director, Best Actress and Best Editing. Zero Motivation revolves around three female soldiers stationed in a remote section of the Israeli desert, and the anti-authoritarian vibe that occurs when they have little to do. The film critic Rodrigo Perez described it as “An absorbing office saga and diverting dark comedy.” Watch the trailer below.

The post Israeli comedy ‘Zero Motivation’ gets a Us trailer appeared first on Sound On Sight.

Sometimes the brightest gems of the festival season, and of the year, are found outside the high profile venues of Venice, Telluride, Tiff, and Nyff. And certainly for The Playlist this year, one of the most memorable films we saw was Israeli comedy "Zero Motivation," which screened earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival (where it won the Narrative Prize award). The good news is that you can catch up with the film at theaters very soon, and the first trailer is here. Winner of six Israeli Film Academy awards including Best Director, Best Actress and Best Editing, the film is presented in three chapters, following a trio of women stationed in a remote Israeli desert, fulfilling their obligatory military service and thus without much to do. It's a critical comedy about Israel's military culture with an anti-authoritarian vibe, in a movie Rodrigo Perez called in his review "surprisingly insightful" and "really funny.

Festival moving forward following controversy surrounding the Tricycle Theatre.

The UK Jewish Film Festival (Ukjff) is preparing to host its “strongest ever” run, according to founder and executive director Judy Ironside.

The festival made headlines in August when London’s Tricycle Theatre refused to be part of the upcoming event, which runs Nov 6-23. This was due to Ukjff being part-funded by the Israeli Embassy, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

The theatre quickly reversed the ruling and invited back the Ukjff “with no restrictions on funding”.

But before the u-turn – and with 26 screenings already planned for the festival’s 18th edition - Ironside had to find new venues fast.

“We were very surprised,” said Ironside, who created the festival in 1997. “It has been the home of the festival for many years…it’s a great space and we love the venue.

“We would never have wished for this to happen, but I think...

The film about a woman facing a rabbinical court to obtain a divorce from a husband won the top award at the Israeli Ophirs.

Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsalem has picked up the top prize at the Israeli Film Academy’s Ophirs Awards, which will see it submitted for Best Foreign-Language Oscar. It also picked up a supporting actor trophy for Sasson Gabbai.

The film marks the final part of a trilogy exposing the tribulations of a woman facing a rabbinical court and trying to obtain a divorce from a husband who refuses to grant it.

The courtroom drama, written and directed by the siblings Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz, debuted in Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes and went on to win the Best Israeli Feature, Audience Award and Best Actor at the Jerusalem Film Festival. It has sold to 25 territories

Another big winner last night was Talia Lavie’s black comedy Zero Motivation, which picked...

Israeli's Oscar equivalent, The Ophirs, announced their nominations yesterday and here are the Best Picture nominees, courtesy of friend of Tfe Yonatan. One of these six films will surely be submitted as their Oscar hopeful.

Dana Ivgy & Nelly Tagar star in "Zero Motivation"

• The Farewell Party - Dramedy set in a retirement home and it's the nomination leader with 14

• Gett: The Trial of Viviane Absalem - Drama about a woman struggling legally to get a divorce. This is the film we were talking about a couple of days ago when the foreign charts went up. It's co-directed by and stars the great Ronit Elkabetz (Late Marriage). It won 12 nominations. Music Box films (who had such a huge success with Poland's Oscar submission Ida this summer) have the distribution rights but no Us release date has been announced.

• Is That You? - A film projectionist searches for the love of...

Talya Lavie’s Zero Motivation won the Grand Prix at this year’s Odessa International Film Festival (Oiff), overshadowed in its final days by the shooting down of a Malaysian Airways plane.

Lavie’s debut feature, handled internationally by The Match Factory, was voted by the festival-goers to receive the Golden Duke statuette and the $12,000 cash prize.

Director Lavie and actress Shani Klein were accompanied on stage by the Israel Film Fund Katriel Schory to accept the Grand Prix from the hands of the Oiff president Viktoriya Tigipko.

News of the Malaysian Airways plane tragedy broke early on Thursday evening during a reception in honour of Turkish films showing at the festival.

A minute’s silence was held in memory of the crash victims ahead of Gogol Wives’ documentary Pussy vs Putin that evening.

On Friday, another minute of silence was held at the beginning of the awards ceremony in memory of the aeroplane’s passengers as well...

Talya Lavie’s Zero Motivation won the Grand Prix at this year’s Odessa International Film Festival (Oiff), overshadowed in its final days by the shooting down of a Malaysian Airways plane.

Lavie’s debut feature, handled internationally by The Match Factory, was voted by the festival-goers to receive the Golden Duke statuette and the $12,000 cash prize.

Director Lavie and actress Shani Klein were accompanied on stage by the Israel Film Fund Katriel Schory to accept the Grand Prix from the hands of the Oiff president Viktoriya Tigipko.

News of the Malaysian Airways plane tragedy broke early on Thursday evening during a reception in honour of Turkish films showing at the festival.

A minute’s silence was held in memory of the crash victims ahead of Gogol Wives’ documentary Pussy vs Putin that evening.

On Friday, another minute of silence was held at the beginning of the awards ceremony in memory of the aeroplane’s passengers as well...

Zero Motivation director planning Brooklyn-set comedy.

Talya Lavie, director of local box office hit Zero Motivation, is developing a comedy about an illegal Israeli immigrant musician in New York working a Hebrew teacher with a wealthy, Brooklyn, ultra-orthodox Jewish family.

Entitled The Current Love of My Life, it is a contemporary adaptation of a story by 19th century author Sholem Aleichem, whose work also inspired Fiddler on the Roof.

Lavie unveiled the film at the final pitching session of the script development Jerusalem Film Lab on Friday.

In her contemporary re-telling, penniless Israeli musician Bini, who is living in New York illegally, is hired by a wealthy ultra-orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn to teach their youngest son Hebrew on the eve of his marriage to a girl from an important religious family in Jerusalem.

Too lazy to study the language or reply to his future wife’s Hebrew emails, the son asks Bini to keep up the...

Zero Motivation director planning Brooklyn-set comedy.

Talya Lavie, director of local box office hit Zero Motivation, is developing a comedy about an illegal Israeli immigrant musician in New York working a Hebrew teacher with a wealthy, Brooklyn, ultra-orthodox Jewish family.

Entitled The Current Love of My Life, it is a contemporary adaptation of a story by 19th century author Sholem Aleichem, whose work also inspired Fiddler on the Roof.

Lavie unveiled the film at the final pitching session of the script development Jerusalem Film Lab on Friday.

In her contemporary re-telling, penniless Israeli musician Bini, who is living in New York illegally, is hired by a wealthy ultra-orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn to teach their youngest son Hebrew on the eve of his marriage to a girl from an important religious family in Jerusalem.

Too lazy to study the language or reply to his future wife’s Hebrew emails, the son asks Bini to keep up the...

Ritesh Batra, Talya Lavie, Nora Martirosyan among entrants.

Graduates of the Jerusalem International Film Lab 3rd edition will compete for $80,000 in production prizes at a pitching event at the Jerusalem International Film Festival.

Aspiring directors and producers will present 13 full-length film projects to a panel of jurists and industry.

Competing filmmakers include Talya Lavie (Israel), whose her first feature Zero Motivation won the two awards at the Tribeca Film Festival, Ritesh Batra (India), whose his first feature The Lunchbox premiered last year in Cannes Critics’ Week; Nora Martirosyan (Armenia), who won the Arte International Prize in Cannes’ Atelier (2014), and Ása Hjörleifsdóttir (Iceland), who received the Vff Talent Highlight Pitch Awards at the 2014 Berlinale.

The jury, headed by Michele Halberstadt of Arp, comprises Manfred Schmidt (executive director of the Mdm, Germany), Katriel Schory (executive director of the Israel Film Fund), Charles Tesson (artistic director of the Cannes Critics’ Week), Rémi Burah (Deputy CEO of Arte France Cinéma), [link...

Peter Webber to head jury, David Puttnam to deliver lecture during fifth edition of the Ukranian festival.

Golden Bear winner Black Coal, Thin Ice and the Camera D’Or recipient Party Girl [pictured] are among the 12 films selected for the International Competition at the fifth edition of the Odessa International Film Festival (Oiff), which runs July 11-19.

UK director Peter Webber will head the jury composed of Ukrainian film-maker Sergei Loznitsa, Israeli actress Jenya Dodina, Belorussian actress-director Olga Dykhovichnaya and French actor-critic Jean-Philippe Tessé.

The other films in the running for the Golden Duke award are:

Bryan Reisberg’s social and psychological drama Big Significant Things (Us)Levan Koguashvili’s feelgood film Blind Dates (Georgia)Director and painter Lech Majewski’s Field of Dogs (Poland)Alonso Ruizpalacios’ road movie debut Güeros (Mexico)Valentin Hotea’s social and psychological drama Roxanne (Romania)Anna Melikyan’s Kinotavr award-winner Star (Russia)Maximilan Erlenwein’s psychological thriller Stereo (Germany)Tribeca winner [link=nm...

Zeitgeist Films has acquired the Israeli comedy, "Zero Motivation," which won the best narrative feature prize at the Tribeca Film Festival, from German sales group The Match Factory. From first-time director Tayla Lavie, the film is set at a remote army base in the Israeli desert and follows a unit of female Israeli soldiers. When the film premiered at Tribeca, it won the founders award for best narrative feature and the Nora Ephron prize honoring a female writer or filmmaker "with a distinctive voice.” Comparing it to Robert Altman's classic "Mash," in his review of the film at Tribeca, Eric Kohn wrote, "it's a softly humorous and sad story about the frustrations of young women thrust into the military complex who air their grievances with snark." "Zero Motivation" was produced by Eilon Ratzkovsky of July August Productions and France's Haut Et Court. The Match Factory is handling world sales...

Exclusive: Zeitgeist Films picks up Tribeca winner.

The Match Factory has confirmed a Us deal for Talya Lavie’s first feature Zero Motivation with Zeitgeist Films.

The sale follows on from the film’s strong reception at Tribeca, where the film won the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature and the Nora Ephron Prize.

“We are thrilled to be working with The Match Factory again as we admire their taste in the films they produce and represent” stated co-president Nancy Gerstman of Zeitgeist Films. “We fell in love with Zero Motivation as did the audiences we watched it with at Tribeca.”

Other recent sales of Zero Motivation include FilmsWeLike for Canada and Jiff Distribution for Australia.

The film will be released in Israel in June by Shani Films.

“I am delighted to cooperate again with Nancy and Emily, they are totally motivated to turn the film into a success, as they did with Hannah Arendt,” said [link=nm...

Exclusive: Leading art house sales outfit The Match Factory has revealed details of its packed Cannes slate.

Among the titles the Cologne-based company is presenting on the Croisette are three films in Official Selection.

Alice Rohrwacher ́s second feature, Le Meraviglie is screening in Competition.The film’s cast includes Monica Bellucci.

Rohrwacher, whose Corpo Celeste screened in the Directors’ Fortnight in 2011, worked on the new feature with her regular producer, Carlo Cresto-Dina (Tempesta) in co-production with Switzerland (Amka Films Productions) and Germany (Pola Pandora).

The Match Factory is also handling Snow in Paradise, the first feature film by renowned UK editor, Andrew Hulme. The film is screening in Un Certain Regard.

The film is based on the true story of Martin Askew who grew up in a crime-riddled east end of London in a culture of violence.

The sales outfit is also representing Cannes regular Kornél Mundruczó’s White God, which will play...

Films have toyed with the concept of time and storytelling almost since the simple film narrative was started. But, as our attention spans continue to get shorter and harder to maintain, toying with a film’s structure could increase that hard to maintain attention (not to imply that all films should do this). Two films in particular at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival show how altering a film’s structure could dramatically improve a film, or, at least, make it an even more engaging film. Zero Motivation segments its stories into episodes and Human Capital divides its varying perspectives into separate chapters to successfully tell these engaging stories.

Read more...

Thanks for following along with our Tribeca adventures and remember to follow Glenn, Diana, Jason, Abstew and myself on twitter for continual movie madness. Here are the 40 films we reviewed this year in alpha order...

a still from Der Samurai

5 to 7 (Diana)

About Alex (Glenn)

Alex in Venice (Glenn)

The Bachelor Weekend -Irish comedy (Nathaniel)

Bad Hair -Venezuelan childhood drama (Nathaniel)

Beneath the Harvest Sky (Glenn)

Boulevard -with Robin Williams (Nathaniel)

Bright Days Ahead (Abstew)

The Canal -horror (Jason)

Chef -starry indie from Jon Favreau (Abstew)

Dior and I (Glenn)

Electric Slide -hipster 80s crime drama (Nathaniel)

Every Secret Thing -mystery with Dakota Fanning (Nathaniel)

Extraterrestrial - horror (Jason)

Gabriel - with Rory Culkin (Abstew)

Glass Chin - with Corey Stoll (Diana)

Goodbye To All That (Diana)

In Your Eyes - Joss Whedon online film (Jason)

Indigenous -horror (Jason)

Just Before I Go -Courteney Cox directing (Glenn)

Life Partners...

Festival awards can be curious things sometimes. There are films that receive various prizes at major festivals, yet have trouble connecting with broader audiences. Others still have difficulty garnering critical support even after recognition from a particular jury. Time will tell if Talya Lavie's "Zero Motivation" resonates beyond the screening radius of the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, but in the meantime, it's a favorite in a number of areas. We asked members of Indiewire's Criticwire Network covering this year's festivities in Tribeca to send us their favorite films and performances from this year's program. Among the narrative features, "Zero Motivation" (which took home the World Narrative prize at last week's festival awards) placed highest on their overall combined lists. The darkly comic Israeli soldier tale appeared on the most ballots, narrowly edging out a group of other international Tribeca premieres. "Glass Chin," Noah Buschel's drama about life after boxing glory,...