We’re all drowning in news, most of it horrific.
New Yorkers have the chance to shut off cell phones and recover in the dark shelter of the Other Israel Film Festival. Let the moving image pour over us before we go blinking back into the light of day or the bright lights of a Manhattan night.
Warning: The 19th annual Other Israel Film Festival (at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan) does not offer unmitigated feel-good experiences. But you will have a chance for dialogue with many of the festival’s Jewish and Palestinian filmmakers at post screening Q&As. The OIFF runs from Nov. 6-13, including two screenings at Brooklyn synagogues. Palestinian stories bookend the festival with feature films – the sold-out prize winning opener, “The Sea,” and closing night “Bella.” Bedouin and West Bank films are in the mix.
The man behind it all, usually on hand at the screenings, is Isaac Zablocki, senior director of the JCC’s Carole Zabar Film Center, Director of the Israel Film Center, and Director of Reel Abilities Film Festival: New York.
He and Carole Zabar, the woman behind the OIFF and ongoing outreach to Israeli Jewish and and Palestinian filmmakers, make their politics clear. Q&A moderators come from Ha’aretz (Israel’s critical media voice covering the Netanyahu government and the Gaza war) and from organizations dedicated to Jewish and Arab co-existence. Just a year ago, Zabar’s husband, Saul Zabar, was standing to applause on his 96th birthday at the opening of the Other Israel Film Festival. Now we are left with his front page Oct. 7 New York Times obituary.
I previewed many of the offerings, and here are my thoughts on a few standouts.
“Some Notes on the Current Situation” offers a six-vignette, mostly black and white sci-fi, time travel, woman alone, film-within-a-film rebbe antidote. Director Eran Kolirin (“The Band’s Visit”) pushes buttons we didn’t even know we had. If you crave outrage, he stages young male and female soldiers in shorts and white T-shirts for toughening up by an IDF commander on assignment to make a film for Netflix. In front of the younguns, he grabs the woman soldier in uniform at his side into an intense kiss. She seems to enjoy it. (Does she have a choice?) He forces a young female soldier out of line, pushes her to the ground, pummels her to the barks of a German shepherd. We hear her screams as the rest of the squad look on in horror, then turn away. And for good measure, not just sexist violence, we have racist, homophobic, Iranian slurs. Along with a catechism of Israel myths and realities. Other vignettes offer stop-making-sense escape. But escape to where?
For something more traditional, the documentary “A Place of Her Own,” from co-directors Adi Toledano and Dana Pney-Gil, follows a middle aged Muslim woman in the one Arab village left in Israel with beachfront property. Luxury apartments are going up overlooking the Mediterranean. The locals know only Jews will be able to afford them. They understand that everything that makes their village unique will disappear. One woman says the number of young men killed is rising, because it’s a patriarchal society. Women don’t report their sons’ weapons, fearing their potential use.
Meanwhile, Amina, our heroine in headscarf, baggy top and pants, scrubs floors in a local clinic to finance her dream—a place to sell used clothing to villagers. Her women’s sharing circle sisters talk about their dreams and offer emotional support. They tell her: “Don’t just look to plants and animals. You need a woman’s warmth.” She recoils, then gets a hug. “Look how radiant she is now. She really needed it.” Then—miraculously—a social worker and a group of architecture students, most of them modern young women—arrive. The Technion has chosen their village, Jisr az-Zarqa, to build a women’s center with ongoing input from the local women. The dream comes true, but that’s not the end. No spoiler alert here. Just suffice it to say, Amina never loses her true inner radiance. But look at East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Will Palestinians be allowed to hold onto anything good?
If the Gaza war’s lasting damage keeps you awake, the documentary “I Cried in Gaza” more than confirms your worst fears. Nurit Kedar’s film, which makes its international premiere at the OIFF, follows a number of women soldiers suffering from PTSD. This war marked the first time women were in active combat since 1948. Of the 15,000 soldiers receiving “mental care” when the film was made this year, 4,000 were women. Some five out of 10 women soldiers now suffer from PTSD.
The women in the film are young, attractive, and appear in three sets of interviews each four months apart. Unobtrusive music and sounds of bombings mix with their ongoing suffering. We see war footage, mostly the backs of male soldiers rushing the wounded into Apache helicopters. We don’t see Gazans. We just get one traumatized woman saying early on, when a prison was built to hold terrorists, she “heard terrible screaming and thought they were murdering us.” It turned out to be the prisoners screaming in terror. By the third session, the women believe their deadened condition is permanent. One woman who served in Gaza, then Lebanon says, “After Gaza, I didn’t think I was traumatized. Now I know I am. Not because of the combat in Lebanon but because of the time that elapsed. Now I can say absolutely the trauma is in my body.”
The film closes with the question: Is it ethical to recruit post traumatic female fighters for additional service?
Why limit concern to traumatized women soldiers? What about the Israeli men? And what about the Gazans who have managed to survive?
I know we can’t inject our own comments into a film. We’re silent watchers. But I wonder what kind of therapy these post-combat, traumatized soldiers are getting. I’d like to suggest something specific: polyvagal therapy. It’s built on the approach that the deeply traumatized can be helped to recover feelings of safety and heal. They can regain the highest level of nervous system functioning – a step above fight/flight – to gradually return to normal functioning including joy and compassion. Maybe most of Israel needs this.
Even with the need to be heard in these confrontational times, we accept the idea that we will watch a film in silence. We give the film space to enfold us and carry us to its conclusion.
Can this unwritten agreement be extended into the light of day to give all of us on all sides of deeply held convictions the space to speak … and to be heard?
Find more information about the 2025 Other Israel Film Festival here.
Amy Stone is a founding mother of Lilith magazine.
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