JFF IN BRIEF

• THE OSCARS are relatively easy to predict, since the same group always votes on them, but film festival juries change every year. So I really have no idea which Israeli feature film will win the Jerusalem Film Festival’s Haggiag Award in a year when several of Israel’s most acclaimed directors, among them Nir Bergman, Meni Yaesh, Eran Kolirin and Ori Sivan, have new films out.

At press time all of the Israeli feature films had screened except for Dorit Hakim’s Moon the 12th House, about estranged sisters who reconnect and which stars two of Israel’s best-known actresses, Yaara Peleg and Yuval Scharf.

Audiences were divided over the six films that have been shown in the competition, and each movie has passionate supporters and detractors.

Classical music aficionados and those who like the idea of updating biblical stories were charmed by Ori Sivan’s Harmonia. This drama, which transposes the Avraham/Sarah story to a classical music orchestra in Jerusalem, stars Alon Aboutboul and Tali Sharon. I wanted to love it, since I admired Sivan’s previous work, but found it more cerebral than engaging.

Eran Kolirin’s Beyond the Mountains and the Hills, which looks at one family’s struggle against alienation, featured wonderful acting and some interesting situations, but in the end it was relentlessly downbeat.

My favorite Israeli film of the festival so far was Asaph Polonsky’s One Week and a Day. The movie is a simple but graceful story of two parents and how they get through the first day following their son’s shiva. It was believable, with no cinematic contrivance, and, in spite of its subject, which might sound very dark, it was the only Israeli film with some real comic moments. Shai Avivi and Evgenia Dodina were brilliant as the parents, and Tomer Kapon was very funny as their stoner neighbor. Some criticized its sentimentality, but it moved me.

It’s such a universal story, I could easily see it being remade around the world, as the television series B’Tipul has been.

• DOCUMENTARIES, AS well as feature films, are also a crucial part of the festival and arts documentaries have been particularly strong this year. I loved Kent Jones’ Hitchcock/Truffaut, a fascinating look at the meeting between two of my favorite directors, and how Hitchcock influenced the younger French director.

I have heard great things about Eat That Question – Frank Zappa, First Monday in May (about the Met gala fashion show) and Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures.

If you didn’t catch these films at the festival, look for them at cinematheques throughout the year, and on the YES Docu channel on television.