Published: 17 December 2020
Last updated: 5 March 2024
FOR THE PAST 33 years, the Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles has been a huge draw, not just for the local Jewish and Israeli population, but for the entire city. The annual two-week festival has attracted some of Tinseltown’s biggest celebrities and been sponsored by such well known organisations at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which hosts the Golden Globe Awards.
This year, however, the festival, which opened on December 13 and will present 25 films until December 27, had to forego the glitz and glamour of red carpets and live celebrity interviews for an online-only presentation.
The festival is the brainchild of Meir Fenigstein, 70, a former Israeli rock musician whose nickname is Poogy (he was the drummer in the 1970s band Kaveret/Poogy). This year presented a major challenge for Fenigstein, who initially considered cancelling the festival when the pandemic hit in March, he told The Jewish Independent via Zoom from Tel Aviv ahead of opening night.
“If we’d wanted to make [this shift to online] even without the pandemic it would have probably taken a few years, but with the pandemic we had no choice,” Fenigstein said. “I felt that it’s important to continue the festival. Everyone in every festival around the world is trying to do this. Nobody knows how successful [the festival] will be or how many people will participate but it’s looking pretty good.”
One of the upsides of this new format, though, Fenigstein noted, is that when the festival was live, it was only possible to bring a few of the filmmakers to LA. Now “we are doing (pre-recorded) Q&As with all the filmmakers as well as the directors and the stars. This is an added value for the audience.”
This year’s films have been broken into three categories: 12 new feature films, seven former Ophir (Israeli Oscar) winners from the past decade, and five documentaries. The sixth documentary is a screening of the 2013 reunion concert by Kaveret/Poogy together with an interview with Fenigstein.
The film was screened on opening night to coincide with Fenigstein’s 70th birthday.
The other opening night film was Asia, Israel’s official entry for Best International Film at the 2021 Academy Awards. Asia, by first time feature film writer-director Ruthy Pribar, is a touching drama about a mother and daughter. It won nine Ophir Awards this year including Best Film, Best Leading Actress for Alena Yiv and Best Supporting Actress for Shira Haas of Shtisel and Unorthodox fame.
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“I just heard that Unorthodox is one of the top 10 series on Netflix,” Fenigstein said. “Shira is a big star, and Israel’s first ever Emmy nominee. I don’t know if I can say if she’s the new or upcoming Gal Gadot. She’s not Gal Gadot, but she’s a new Israeli star in America who’s young and she has a lot to offer in the future.”
The Q&A with Pribar, Haas and Yiv was moderated by Annette Insdorf, director of undergraduate film studies at Columbia University. Insdorf asked Haas, who is 25, to compare her role as the 17-year-old Vika in Asia who is suffering from a debilitating illness, with that of Esty, the young, Orthodox woman who breaks away from her former life in Unorthodox.
Beyond having to learn Yiddish for Unorthodox and Russian for Asia, Haas revealed an unusual chronology. “I shot Asia [first] and a few months later [I learned] I was doing Unorthodox. These two characters are both so close to my heart and they could not have been more different – in so many ways. Both had female directors I adore.”
Both roles were “a gift”, she added. “If I talk long enough about Asia, I can start crying. I remember the first time reading the script. It was like a very specific feeling. It was something very, very special… To take a dark subject and to bring so much light to it and to talk about life … it’s just amazing to be able to do this and be able to do two roles [one] after the other, and [have] two very different strong, female characters.”
If I talk long enough about Asia, I can start crying. I remember the first time reading the script. It was like a very specific feeling. It was something very, very special - Shira Haas
Pribar, 38, also spoke about why she chose a Russian family for the film. Yiv, 30, who plays the title role, was born in St Petersburg and made Aliyah with her family when she was 14. Throughout the majority of the film, she speaks Russian.
Israeli-born Pribar explained: “When I started writing the film, I understood this mother-daughter relationship. I wanted them to be by themselves, to not have a circle of family and friends that Israel is very famous for. I wanted [the characters] to be immigrants. I chose for them to be Russian because it made sense; because there’s such a large community of [Russian] immigrants.”
She said the film was “very personal. It comes from a lot of pain I’ve suffered throughout my life through losing my older sister. It’s about how do you let go of a loved one… and be able to be there when you’re doing it?”
While Haas was tasked with the difficult role of physically transforming as she grapples with a debilitating disease, she noted, “the disease is not the centre [of the film], it’s about the [mother-daughter] relationship and the light they find in it”.
Pribar concurred. “Although it’s not always easy to watch, it’s always optimistic. There is always light creeping into the dark places… you can always find something to take comfort in and they take comfort in being with one another. This is what we want in our lives at the end of the day. We want to be with our loved ones… especially when they are suffering.”
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Fenigstein said he is delighted that American audiences will get to see Asia, along with some other stellar new Israeli films including Eytan Fox’s Sublet, about an unlikely friendship between a 20-something Israeli and a middle-aged New York Times journalist which is the centrepiece of the festival, and Amos Gitai’s Laila in Haifa, an Israeli-French co-production that explores the interweaving stories of five Israeli and Palestinian women, which will close out the festival.
However, he notes that things are difficult in the industry right now. “Production this year has been slow,” he said. “The [Israeli] Ministry of Culture decided to give extra money to every production during the pandemic,” but he added he knew of at least two films that were shut down for several weeks after it was discovered that at least one of the stars had contracted the virus. “Fifty people didn’t work for two weeks,” he said. “That cost a lot of money.”
Looking ahead to next year’s festival, Fenigstein said, “Right now, there’s no budget here. What will happen in 2021? Who knows?”
For now, though, he’s thrilled that there is a 2020 festival. “I hope people come and enjoy this new format.”
Photo: Alena Yiv with Shira Haas in Asia
Kelly Hartog is a former Managing Editor of the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, and also worked for The Jerusalem Post in Israel
