Jerusalem Film Festival

Bernd Buder, co-program director of the JFBB, was there: “It was a great opportunity to spend four days in intensive exchange with the organizers of other Jewish film festivals, to talk about difficulties and the opportunities that are nevertheless seized. I think that was the beginning of a wonderful friendship. There were also great films to see, whereby I concentrated on the Israeli program: from EID, the first feature film by a Bedouin director, to the personal-political documentary THE GOVERNOR, which reflects the often arbitrary decisions of the director's grandfather, who was a military governor in mainly Palestinian-populated areas, to the arthouse drama TROPICANS.”

As part of this year's Jerusalem Film Festival, a conference day was dedicated to the “Future of Israeli Film”. It dealt with content-related and technological aspects of artificial intelligence, as well as controversial film policy issues such as the controversial reform plans of the Ministry of Culture for film funding.

In future, the intention is to focus on promoting commercial films. Large sections of the film scene fear that this will mean the end of documentaries and arthouse films and the, often critical, creativity of their internationally successful film landscape. In this context, there are fears that their cinema will become less attractive to foreign partners and investors.

Part of the festival was a gathering of European and US Jewish and Israeli film festivals, from Los Angeles to Brussels, Moscow, Barcelona, Prague and Warsaw. Most of these festivals took place shortly after October 7 and agreed that Jewish film festivals now have a special responsibility in the face of increasing anti-Semitism and a silent boycott of Israeli films at many international events. Also to keep a space open for dialog on all sides in the tense political situation.

The Jerusalem Film Festival was founded in 1984 as part of the work of the Jerusalem Cinematheque. It shows between 150 and 200 films every year. This year's edition was opened by US actress Jennifer Jason Leigh.