The second Shomron Film Festival was launched and included the screening of 25 Israeli films in a 4-day cultural celebration, of which 9 were short documentaries of the Shomron Film Fund – created under the guidance of Itai Asher and the artistic director of the fund Rabbi Mordechai Vardi – and accompanied by unique characters in the landscape of Yosh and The rest include films that follow the complex relationship between the settlers and the Palestinians.
At the main event of the festival in which the blockbuster film “Good Guys” by “United King” was screened, the chairman of the foundation Yossi Dagan surprised the filmmaker and his co-producer Yikki Reisner and presented him on stage with a certificate of appreciation from the festival for his work to promote Israeli cinema.
The screenwriter and producer of the film, Yikki Reisner, was moved by the gesture and said: “I am proud and happy to see this film as the most successful film this year in Israeli cinema, it is a great honor for me that a film that is clean becomes so successful. This thing proves that quality matters and not other things, and it’s a good thing.”
Dr. Aliza Lavie, Chairman of the Film Council, congratulated the filmmakers of Judea and Samaria and said: “Here is a new, sweeping cultural creation that brings new voices to Israeli cinema. There is nothing more important than diversity and enabling. We as the Film Council will continue to work to strengthen Israeli cinema and increase the budget The cinema for the sake of Israeli culture”.
The head of the Shomron Regional Council Yossi Dagan congratulated the filmmakers and the festival island and said: “This is the first time that we see on the big screen the lives of the settlers in Yosh, as they are depicted in the eyes of the filmmakers who live in the area, and not by filmmakers who come from Tel Aviv to tell about our lives Here. This is huge and significant news in the world of culture, the right of every person or region to be the one who tells their story and here it is happening here with wonderful films of the fund, which talk about everything without fear and without filters.” Dagan also said in reference to the calls for a boycott against the festival and the fund in recent months: ” This event is further proof that the boycott policy has failed. They won’t shut us up and they won’t stop the cultural creation here.”
Ester Alosh, director of the fund: “Four years ago we dreamed of a dream to bring a different voice, unique to Israeli cinema, to grow filmmakers from the area from Judea and Samaria. Here tonight we get to see the dream come true, this is another step on the way to a real cultural breakthrough from Judea and Samaria.”
The festival was held by the Settlements and Development Division of the Shomron Regional Council, among the fund’s films screened at the festival were also short documentaries that presented the complex relationship between the settlers in the area and the Palestinians, including Avraham Shapira’s film stating about a settler from Gush Etzion who performs in an Andalusian band with a Palestinian from Bethlehem. .
Filmmaker Yohai Hadad’s film documents a Palestinian rescuer from Jericho who learned to speak Yiddish and spices his words with Torah verses on the shore of the Dead Sea, in order to communicate with the ultra-orthodox crowd that comes to bathe there.
The absolute majority of the fund’s films were devoted to female creations about women in Yosh. A film by Moriah Yair Maneva Tsuf about a woman who set up an isolated farm in Samaria and her struggle with raising her son. Chen Klein’s film describes a convert who lives in Yitzhar and her attempts to fit in against the background of her longing for Christmas, her film by Elisheva Ginzburg about a settler resident of Bat Ein who dedicates her life to playing the harp for the terminally ill and her dealings with the death of one of the patients to whom an Arab from Jerusalem connected and much more.