Schedule - Saturday, 11/4/2017

2:00pm - Short Films: Session 1

A compilation of groundbreaking, thought-provoking shorts:

72 GILO
Dir. Catie Damon – 2017 – 7 min – Narrative
When a bus picks up a group of stranded Israelis, a Palestinian girl decides to make it her stage.

ACROSS THE LINE
Dir. Nadav Shlomo Giladi – 2017 – 29 min – Narrative
An unexpected encounter between a Palestinian hitchhiker and a Jewish settler offers life-changing lessons.

THE TRANSFER
Dir. Michael Grudsky – 2016 – 22 min – Narrative
A group of Israeli soldiers and their Arab prisoner must challenge their prejudices when their van breaks down in the desert.

OUR HEROES
Dir. Yair Agmom – 2017 – 16 min – Narrative
A Jewish man and Arab woman recount their versions of a shared moment during the 1948 war.

Screening followed by Q&A with Nadav Shlomo Giladi. 

Co-presented by Givat Haviva: The Center for Shared Society

4:00pm - Short Films: Session 2

A compilation of groundbreaking, thought-provoking shorts:

ANA MIN EL YAHUD
Dir. Aharon Shem Tov and Niv Hachlili – 2017 – 18 min – Narrative
Possessed by the spirit of his dead grandfather, an Israeli teacher questions his own identity.

AT DAWN
Dir. Omri Burstyn – 2015 – 19 min – Narrative
Ali, an Arab in a group of radical Jewish activists, is put in danger due to his crush on Yael.

DOMINO STREET
Dir. Haim Barbi – 2017 – 16 min – Narrative
The lives of the residents of Domino Street in Jaffa are entangled, and small decisions make their destinies become intertwined.

SANTÉ
Dir. Sabrine Khoury 2017 – 19 min – Narrative
An Arab salsa dancer is in a relationship with a Jewish dancer. Together they attempt to perform in an Israeli settlement.

Screening followed by Q&A with Haim Barbi, Omri Burstyn, and Sabrine Khoury. 

Co-presented by America-Israel Cultural Foundation.

6:45pm - A Land Without Borders
2017 | 62 minutes
NY Premiere
Director: Michael Alalu & Nir Baram

Award-winning writer Nir Baram grew up in a political household. Both his father and grandfather were members of the Knesset and Ministers in the Israeli Labor Party governments. As Baram begins to lose faith in even the possibility of a two-state solution, he decides to travel throughout the West Bank to speak with the local populations on both sides of the conflict. He learns that in crucial substantive ways, the two groups don’t start from a common foundation. So how can they even participate in the same conversation? While the international focus of a two-state solution generally revolves around the “Green Line,” the average West Bank Palestinian on the street cares little about 1967 political borders when they desire the land they lost in 1948. These surprising revelations force Baram to challenge his entire political belief system and reevaluate his own hopes for a peaceful resolution to this conflict.

Screening followed by Q&A with Nir Baram and Gili Getz (J Street) moderated by Ethan Bronner, senior editor at Bloomberg. 

Co-presented by Jewish Currents, J Street Education Fund, Partners for a Progressive Israel, and Park Slope Jewish Center

8:30pm - The Promised Band
2016 | 89 minutes
NY Premiere
Director: Jen Heck

American reality TV producer Jen Heck brings her friends from a self-described bubble in Tel Aviv, where many are ignorant of the realities of life for Palestinians, to meet Lina, a Palestinian living in Nablus. This action could land them all in a great deal of trouble, as the Palestinian city is off limits to Israeli citizens. When Shlomit and Lina hit it off, they decide to form a band which would allow them to continue to meet and interact. None have much musical ability, but Shlomit recruits a few more friends, and they begin making regular trips to Lina’s home in Nablus. The more time the women spend together, the more they connect with each other and begin to realize they’re not so different.

Screening followed by Q&A with Jen Heck, Ben Frazer (editor), Viki Auslander (protagonist), and Obada Shtaya, regional director at OneVoice Movement. 

Co-presented by OneVoice Movement and The Selma and Lawrence Ruben Center for 20s + 30s.