The festival will feature over 30 documentaries from Israel and the world, including Israeli premieres of Free Solo, My Generation and Our Chape; a live performance by Ladina singer-songwriter Yasmin Levy; Q&As with filmmakers; a local art exhibition; a seminar on documentary comedy sponsored by Reshet 13; an outdoor screening; guided tours of the region, and more.
This year will mark the 10th annual edition of the Docaviv Galilee Documentary Film Festival in Ma’alot-Tarshiha. The festival will run for five days (13—17 November) at various venues around town, including the Performing Arts Center, Apter Barrer Art Center Gallery, Grass Community Center, Tarshiha’s Artist Promenade, and Ma’arag Center in Kfar Vradim.
Docaviv Galilee presents the very best in Israeli and international documentary cinema, raising pertinent social and cultural issues and driving public debate. Throughout the festival, our ever-growing audience will have the opportunity to meet and converse with documentary filmmakers. The festival, now an integral part of cultural life in the Galilee, is only one of Docaviv’s numerous initiatives. Apart from Docaviv Galilee, the NPO produces Docaviv – The Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival; Docaviv Negev, held in Yeruham; Docaviv Cinema at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque; and many documentary film screenings at various venues around Israel. Docaviv Galilee is produced in collaboration with the Ma’alot-Tarshiha Municipality and the support of The Ministry of Culture, Bank Hapoalim and Reshet 13.
Festival highlights include:
- Gala opening and screening of Ofir Trainin’s film, Family in Transition, winner of the Israeli competition at Docaviv Festival. The screening will be in the presence of the documentary subjects.
- A screening of the winner of Docaviv’s International Competition, The Distant Barking of Dogs.
- Premiere screening of Free Solo, a film by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, winner of the Audience Award at Toronto International Film Festival. The film follows legendary rock climber Alex Honnold, as he sets out for the biggest challenge of his life. The screening is held in collaboration with National Geographic.
- Premiere screening of My Generation: Actor Michael Caine (accompanied by Paul McCartney, Marianne Faithfull and many others) returns to the cultural revolution of the 1960s in the UK, and to its heroes and unforgettable hits. The film is distributed by United King Films.
- Premiere screening of Our Chape, directed by the siblings Jeff and Michael Zimbalist: The film tracks the rebuilding of the Chapecoense football club after a tragedy. The film is distributed by Lev Cinema.
- A screening of a restored copy of David Perlov’s In Search of Ladino, and a Ladino performance by singer-songwriter Yasmin Levy.
- A premiere gala screening of films by local filmmakers: the seventh edition of Wings, the Docaviv and Apter Barrer Art Center filmmaking workshop, supported by The New Fund for Cinema and TV and led by filmmakers Yael Kipper and Ronen Zaretzky.
- A screening of On Her Shoulders, a film about the struggle of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad, the woman who became the voice of the oppressed Yezidi minority.
- A screening of Grutarally: the Return of “Kid’s Eating Trash,” followed by a talk with the filmmakers, members of the ensemble Arutz Hakibud.
- A free open-air screening of Oum Kalthoum, preceded by Ma’alot (and) Tarshiha, a film made at Docaviv’s joint filmmaking workshop for Jewish and Arab teenagers.
- The closing film is Sounds of Immigration, a literary-documentary journey into Block 461, a Ma’alot neighborhood, directed by Yael Kipper and Ronen Zaretzky.
- A seminar on documentary comedy sponsored by Reshet 13: can documentary cinema be funny? What happens when the reality it depicts is harsh and bleak? Is docu-comedy an established genre, or do filmmakers who wish to attempt such a practice have to reinvent it? We will try to answer these and other questions in a seminar dedicated entirely to documentary comedy and featuring top filmmakers, lecturers and films, a master class and a first look at Down Town LA (Working Title), a work in progress.
Galia Bador, Festival Director: “This year marks the 10th anniversary of Docaviv Galilee. I am moved by the thought that for ten years now, the Galilean audience has been regularly watching excellent documentaries by local and international filmmakers, and that generations of students, both Jews and Arabs, have grown up watching documentaries together at our joint film screenings. Ma’alot Tarshiha is the perfect place for us to present an uncompromising festival program, the kind that acts as a profound social statement of openness to the world. In the same spirit, the festival’s opening film, Family in Transition, celebrates openness, liberalism and acceptance of otherness. I wish us all many more years of meaningful and fruitful collaboration here in the Galilee”.
Ticket prices:
Per film/workshop—NIS 30
Students and soldiers—free
For the full program [Hebrew]