Cinema of Israel

The experiences of immigrants, Holocaust survivors and their children, and Israelis confronting war and social change have supplied enduring subjects for Israeli filmmaking.[4][6] Alongside national history, films explore relationships within families and between communities, the individual’s place in an emerging nation-state, and the tension between belonging and estrangement.[2] These concerns connect films about people born in Israel with stories of newcomers, religious communities, and the Palestinian minority.[2]

Israeli cinema has developed through both commercial entertainment and artistic experimentation.[1] Popular bourekas comedies and melodramas brought ethnic encounters to mass audiences, while Personal Cinema drew on European modernism and the French New Wave.[1] Later filmmaking increasingly concentrated on particular social worlds, including Georgian immigrants, working-class families, religious Jews, Arab Israelis, and young people in Tel Aviv.[7]

Israeli cinema has also developed through international co-productions, adaptations, festivals, and overseas distribution.[8][9] International productions have employed Israeli crews and locations, while Israeli films have reached audiences through festivals, commercial distribution, and Academy Award nominations.[10][8] Domestic institutions—including public film funds, archives, cinematheques, and schools—have provided infrastructure for production and film culture.[4][5]

A film commonly known as Train Station in Jerusalem, made in Ottoman Palestine in 1896 by the Lumière brothers, presented panoramic views to European audiences.[11] Early local production subsequently included informational shorts, documentaries, newsreels, and promotional films, many financed by Zionist organizations for distribution abroad.[1] A film prepared for the 11th Zionist Congress in 1913 documented cities, holy places, and agricultural communities; its original negative was rediscovered in France in 1997.[12]

Ya’acov Ben-Dov became a pioneer of sustained local silent-film production.[13] In 1912 he unsuccessfully sought a 2,500-franc loan from Arthur Ruppin, director of the Zionist Organization’s Palestine Office, to buy a camera, arguing that motion pictures could serve “important propaganda.”[13] He eventually acquired a silent camera after receiving a prize for Austrian military service during World War I and filmed both the young Yishuv and General Edmund Allenby’s entry into Jerusalem in December 1917.[13] The Allenby footage appeared in Judea Liberated, completed in late 1918.[13]

Ben-Dov and a partner established the Menorah Film Company in Mandatory Palestine, whose first production was The Land of Israel Liberated.[13] He made at least 30 films, receiving support at different times from the Jewish National Fund and Keren HaYesod.[13] His 1920s From the Life of Children and Youth in the Land documented childcare, education, agricultural training, and Jewish holiday celebrations; it screened at Tel Aviv’s Eden Cinema before being sent abroad.[14] Most of his films, including Judea Liberated, were lost, and technological change and the transition to sound contributed to his career’s decline.[13] He eventually sold his film library to producer Baruch Agadati.[13]

Regular daily screenings began in Jerusalem in 1912 at Feingold House and Zion Cinema, and in Tel Aviv with Eden Cinema’s opening in 1914.[14] Synchronized sound reached cinemas in 1930; proposed Hebrew terms included “shma’nu’a” and “tzalmenu’a” before “kolno’a” became the common word for cinema.[14] Agadati’s This Is the Land, scripted by Avigdor Hameiri and released in 1935, was the first Hebrew-language talking film.[14] Combining newly directed scenes with Ben-Dov’s documentary footage, it premiered at Tel Aviv’s Mograbi Cinema on February 23.[14]

Early films emphasized Jewish attachment to the land, agricultural labor, nature, and pioneering settlement.[1] Eretz Israel Awakens (1923) followed an American Jewish cotton broker who returns to the land of his fathers after visiting and meeting Yishuv figures.[1] Oded the Wanderer, an early-1930s Hebrew feature, followed a young sabra separated from his classmates on a school excursion and emphasized work on the land and renewed Jewish connection to it.[11] Other early titles included Sabra (1933), Land of Promise (1935), On the Ruins (1936), and My Father’s House (1947).[1]

Agadati and Nathan Axelrod helped establish companies including Moledet, Carmel, and Geva, which produced daily newsreels.[1] Soviet socialist cinema influenced the visual style and editing of early local films; Carmel Studio later became part of Herzliyyah Studio in 1958.[1] After independence, production became more organized, and the Heroic-Nationalist films of the 1950s continued earlier emphases on building and defending the land.[1] Scenes of plowing, harvesting, and pioneer hora dancing used photography, music, and editing to present collective endeavor, with films serving both overseas publicity and the education of new immigrants.[1]

The Israeli-British Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer (1955) was an early international collaboration.[10] Its four fighters come from different backgrounds and undertake a mission during the War of Independence; although they die, their mission succeeds and the hill is awarded to Israel.[11] The film offered a prominent expression of pioneer heroism and sacrifice.[11] Haya Harareet appeared in it four years before her role in Ben-Hur.[15] Other early films receiving limited distribution included Faithful City (1952), Israel (1959), A Story of David (1960), and Sinai Commandos (1968).[15]

State support introduced in the late 1950s accompanied the rise of filmmakers and performers including Ephraim Kishon, Uri Zohar, Menahem Golan, Arik Einstein, Assi Dayan, and Boaz Davidson.[3] The filming of Exodus in 1959 marked another turning point.[10] Released in 1960 and starring Paul Newman, the adaptation of Leon Uris’s novel told the story of Zionism and Israel’s establishment and brought the local industry into contact with Hollywood production practices.[10]

Kishon’s Sallah Shabati (1964), starring Chaim Topol and produced by Golan, shifted away from heroic sacrifice toward comic encounters between an immigrant and Israeli institutions.[16] Its protagonist maneuvers through the system to improve his circumstances, undermining the solemn idealism of earlier films.[11] The film sold more than one million tickets in Israel, became an international success, and was Israel’s first Academy Award-nominated film.[16] Ynet reports that it won two Golden Globes, for foreign-language film and Topol’s performance.[17]

Bourekas cinema became especially prominent during the 1960s and 1970s, portraying misunderstandings and conflicts between Ashkenazi and Sephardi characters.[18] Davidson coined its name as a mocking counterpart to Italian “spaghetti westerns.”[3] These comedies and melodramas often involved mixed marriages and happy endings, drawing large audiences despite poor critical reception.[1] Limited resources affected production: funding was scarce, and inadequate sound sometimes made subtitles necessary.[18]

Golan’s Kazablan (1973), a musical based on a play and an earlier film, became a major example of this popular cinema.[18] His other directing credits included Fortuna, Aliza Mizrachi, and Katz V’Carasso.[18] Films he produced that received foreign-film Oscar nominations included I Love You Rosa (1972), The House on Chelouche Street (1973), and Operation Thunderbolt (1977), the last concerning Israel’s 1976 hostage rescue at Entebbe.[18] Kishon’s The Policeman (1971), starring Shike Ophir as a naïve Jaffa policeman hoping for promotion, also received an Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe.[17]

An alternative artistic movement emerged in the late 1960s through Kayitz, an acronym for Young Israeli Cinema, under the influence of the French New Wave and auteur filmmaking.[11] Known as Personal Cinema or New Sensitivity, it contrasted with popular Class Cinema influenced by radio and theatrical entertainment.[1] Hole in the Moon (1964) and The Case of a Woman (1969) exemplified sophisticated films with poor box-office returns.[1] Zohar’s Three Days and a Child (1967), adapted from A. B. Yehoshua, proved an exception, attracting a large audience; Oded Kotler won Cannes’s Best Actor Award for his performance.[11]

Zohar, Einstein, and their collaborators also developed an informal, brash, locally rooted screen style through works including Metzitzim, Big Eyes, Lul, and Davidson’s Shablul.[17] Avi Nesher’s The Troupe (1978), also known as The Band, dramatized tensions between recruits and veterans in an army entertainment troupe.[17] It and Nesher’s Dizengoff 99 acquired cult status in Israel.[17]

The 1980s brought an industry downturn associated with economic difficulties and increasingly political filmmaking.[3] Important films nevertheless included Beyond the Walls (1984), about Jewish and Palestinian prisoners confronting a corrupt warden, Avanti Popolo (1986), about Egyptian soldiers stranded behind Israeli lines, and Late Summer Blues (1987), about students during the War of Attrition.[4] Beyond the Walls received an Academy Award nomination.[4]

During the 1990s, films increasingly explored personal identity, childhood, and generational divisions.[1] Tel Aviv’s young people appeared in the so-called Sheinkin films, while Sh’hur, The New Land, and Aya – An Imaginary Autobiography, all from 1994, examined the experiences of people of different origins in a new country.[1] Political themes persisted in Life According to Agfa (1992).[1] Shabi Gabizon achieved commercial success with Shuro, despite disruption to its theatrical run during the Gulf War, and later with Lovesick on Nachalat Binyamin.[17]

A generation associated with the late 1990s and early 2000s included Eytan Fox, Dover Kosashvili, Keren Yedaya, Shemi Zarhin, Eran Riklis, and Amos Gitai.[7] Films increasingly examined the nuances of particular communities: Late Marriage (2001) explored Georgian Israeli family authority, while Yedaya’s Or portrayed a working-class mother and daughter facing poverty through rigid framing and restrained camera movement.[7] Increasing funding, film-school graduates, television experience, and an established festival and cinematheque culture helped support the industry’s subsequent expansion.[4]

The Cinema Law of 1999 began implementation in 2001, establishing a framework intended to encourage Israeli filmmaking, protect creative freedom, and express cultural diversity, differing views, and values.[19] The Israel Film Council advises the culture minister on policy and support criteria, while assistance passes through film funds and also reaches cinematheques, festivals, and professional organizations.[19] In the 2009–2010 allocation described in a parliamentary report, annual government cinema support totaled approximately NIS 67 million, including NIS 58 million for five film-support funds.[19]

Feature films received 58.5 percent of this support, documentaries 13.6 percent, and drama films 8.5 percent.[19] Smaller allocations assisted marketing, student and experimental work, archives, awards, festivals, and other institutions.[19] The Israel Film Fund, established in 1979 after lobbying during the preceding decade, had supported more than 280 features by 2008.[20] Commercial, cable, and satellite television operators were also required to devote part of their revenue to feature production, and approximately NIS 38 million went toward feature production in 2007.[20]

Funding was not consistently secure: government cinema support was halved in 1995, leaving resources for approximately five films annually, while Hebrew-language films accounted for only 0.3 percent of Israeli moviegoers’ ticket purchases in 1998.[21] Increased investment after the turn of the century required opportunities for younger filmmakers.[21] The Israeli Film Fund’s budget grew from $2.5 million in 2000 to $7 million in 2003, when approximately 12–14 new features were receiving roughly two-thirds of their budgets from funding.[1]

During the three years following the law’s enactment, the fund invested $16.4 million in 43 films, against total investment of $35.2 million, generating a reported 200,000 workdays.[9] Other financing came from television franchise holders, private investors, artists, and international co-productions.[9] The law’s budget nevertheless fell from NIS 73 million when it took effect in 2001 to NIS 46 million for 2004.[9]

The Jerusalem Film & Television Fund began operating in 2008 to encourage audiovisual works focused on Jerusalem and expand local employment.[22] From 2010 through 2016 it supported eight television series and 48 films, including animation and international productions.[22] Assistance included production expenses, bureaucratic guidance, location searches, and introductions to local professionals.[22] Among supported films, Footnote attracted approximately 290,000 Israeli viewers and NIS 10.3 million in cinema revenue; Bethlehem drew 165,000 and NIS 6.3 million, Hunting Elephants 164,000 and NIS 4.9 million, and The Kind Words 150,000 and NIS 4.4 million.[22]

Foreign productions offered another source of employment and technical experience.[10] Israel’s deserts, snowy mountains, and historic structures supplied varied settings within a small territory.[10] The Western Billy Two Hats (1974), starring Gregory Peck and Jack Warden, was filmed entirely in Israel during a two-month production employing an extensive Israeli crew, although its story concerned the American frontier.[10] Israeli guide Gadi Katz became Peck’s double because of their resemblance, while actors Zeev Berlinsky and Nathan Cogan appeared in the film.[10]

Attempts to create permanent international production bases had uneven results.[10] A Western set near Eilat, authorized in 1966, hosted only three films during five years before burning down in 1971, leaving entrepreneur Alex Hacohen heavily indebted.[10] Golan and Yoram Globus also established studios at Neve Ilan but attracted relatively few international productions.[10] After moving to Hollywood in 1979, they bought Cannon Films, and during the 1980s brought productions including Sahara, Over the Top, and The Delta Force to Israel.[10][18] Rising costs, security conditions after the late-1980s intifada, and insurance difficulties contributed to the decline of such work.[10]

Documentary production has supported both personal storytelling and the preservation of social history.[23] Ruth Diskin joined the founding group of Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel Film School, established its international department, and after twelve years began her own marketing and distribution company in 2001.[23] Her catalogue grew to more than 120 films, including works on Ethiopian immigration and Ethiopian Israelis.[23] She also undertook the preservation and creation of the Micha Shagrir Film Collection, encompassing work from a director-producer whose career spanned about half a century.[23] Arnon Goldfinger’s The Flat and Yishai Orian’s The Beetle drew international attention through personal stories connecting contemporary life with Holocaust memory and Middle Eastern politics.[23]

Religious filmmaking includes both mainstream features and a distinct cinema produced for Haredi women and girls.[24] The latter typically uses female characters and rabbinical approval, with screenings held only several times annually in temporary venues.[24] Tsila Schneider’s early works included Fingerprint (2004) and Where Will I Go (2008); her 2015 Babooshka placed men and women in shared scenes, prompting some viewers to leave.[24] The form developed partly from women’s storytelling gatherings using projected photographs and music, a visual practice Schneider echoed in early films.[24] Many productions operated on budgets around NIS 1 million, financed by loans or sponsors, while Jerusalem’s Ma’aleh film school opened a program for Haredi women around 2014.[24]

Four Israeli features received foreign-language Academy Award nominations between 2008 and 2012: Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort, Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir, Yaron Shani and Scandar Copti’s Ajami, and Cedar’s Footnote.[8] Their subjects ranged from an Israeli military outpost and memories of the 1982 Lebanon War to a mixed neighborhood and a father and son who are Talmud scholars.[4] Ajami, portraying Jews, Christians, and Muslims living alongside one another, also screened at Cannes and won Israeli Film Academy awards for film, direction, editing, music, and screenplay.[25]

These successes accompanied renewed domestic demand: theatrical attendance for Israeli films rose from 140,000 in 2000 to 600,000 in 2003, with another 160,000 viewers attending non-theatrical screenings that year.[9] Reported Israeli-film revenue reached NIS 11.5 million in 2001, while overseas marketing, distribution, and sales brought NIS 10.5 million.[9] International collaboration included the American adaptation The Debt, based on Assaf Bernstein and Ido Rosenblum’s HaHov, and Paul Schrader’s Adam Resurrected (2008), adapted from Yoram Kaniuk and co-produced by Ehud Bleiberg.[8] The latter brought together performers including Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe, Ayelet Zurer, and Hana Laszlo.[8]

Films have increasingly represented religious, Mizrahi, immigrant, Arab, and women’s experiences.[4] Maysaloun Hamoud’s In Between (2016) followed three Arab women in Tel Aviv, while Talya Lavie’s Zero Motivation (2014), about female soldiers, won Tribeca’s Narrative Feature Prize.[4] Festival programs have also presented stories about an Arab Israeli student, an ultra-Orthodox family, a gay football player, a kindergarten teacher and child poet, and religious education concerning sexuality.[26] Touchdown Israel documented Jews, Muslims, Christians, Americans in Israel, and religious settlers playing American football together.[26]

Women filmmakers have addressed family conflict, professional ambitions, sexuality, marriage, Orthodox women’s obstacles, and the effects of the Holocaust on survivors and descendants.[6] Michal Bat-Adam is among directors using autobiographical material.[6] A 2021 gender analysis found that women directed 7 percent of screened Israeli narrative features from statehood through 2000, compared with 21 percent in 2013–2018.[27] It nevertheless found substantial continuing inequality across industry occupations; its scope included screenwriting, directing, production, cinematography, editing, and selected funding and educational settings, rather than every public funding source.[27]

Mainstream portrayals of religious communities also expanded.[28] A Tikvah Ideas essay identifies Gitai’s Kadosh (1999) as an early internationally prominent film set entirely within Haredi society and Ushpizin (2004), set in a Jerusalem Hasidic community, as a change toward additional perspectives.[28] It highlights Rama Burshtein’s directorial debut Fill the Void (2012), which won a Venice prize and seven Ophir prizes, as part of a shift toward religious communities telling their own stories.[28] Burshtein was herself ultra-Orthodox and a Sam Spiegel graduate.[28]

A Tradition Online essay counts 20 Israeli films with religious themes during 1960–1995, compared with 65 during 2000–2015, naming HaHesder, Ushpizin, Fill the Void, and The Woman’s Balcony.[29] It connects that expansion with more television channels, films, funding, and film schools, and with cultural changes following the Yom Kippur War.[29] Genre diversification also included horror: Israeli horror filmmaking emerged after 2010 and expanded during the following decade, adapting international conventions of serial killers, zombies, vampires, and ghosts to local circumstances.[30]

Military service and historical memory remain important subjects.[7] Fox’s Yossi & Jagger (2002) and Walk on Water (2004) placed characters between duty and desire and included gay relationships.[7] Gitai moved between contemporary settings in Kadosh and Alila and historical settings in Kippur and Kedma, the latter concerned with the War of Independence.[7] His documentaries frequently took the form of trilogies, while his features also adapted Israeli literature.[31] At least ten of his films competed for the Cannes Palme d’Or.[32]

Film culture developed beyond production itself.[5] Lia Van Leer and her husband created Israel’s first film society in Haifa in 1956, later the Haifa Cinemathèque, and subsequently established cinematheques in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.[5] They brought otherwise unavailable films to settlements and kibbutzim, and their collection became the national film archive in 1960.[5] Van Leer helped establish the Jerusalem Cinemathèque’s permanent home near the Old City in 1973 and directed the first Jerusalem Film Festival in May 1984, presenting 100 films from 20 countries.[5]

The Cinema Law requires copies of films supported by Israeli funds to be deposited in the Israel Film Archive, described as the Middle East’s largest.[5] Preservation has particular importance given the loss of much early filmmaking.[13] Neighborhood cinemas once combined news screenings with films and social gatherings, but declined after television’s arrival in the late 1960s and shopping-mall development in the 1980s, as exhibition moved toward dedicated complexes.[14]

International engagement also shaped documentary art.[33] A Jewish Review of Books essay recounts that Wim and Lia van Leer financed Chris Marker’s Description of a Struggle without retaining a content veto; filmed over four weeks in spring 1960, it won Berlin’s documentary prize in 1961.[33] The essay traces its influence on David Perlov’s In Jerusalem (1963) and Dan Geva’s Description of a Memory (2006).[33] It describes Marker’s images of Lag BaOmer preparations, a Kibbutz Manara vote, North African Jewish celebrations in Tiberias, and a Haifa children’s art class as elements of a portrait questioning what Jewish sovereignty would become.[33]

Ethnic representation, political criticism, and the relationship between public financing and creative independence have generated significant debate.[1][34] Bourekas films used caricature, accents, and contrasting cultural codes to portray Sephardi–Ashkenazi encounters, while later filmmaking developed more particularized accounts of Middle Eastern and North African Jewish family life, language, music, food, and history.[3][35] Historical criticism has also identified underrepresentation and casting practices in which Ashkenazi performers played Sephardi characters while Sephardi performers played Arabs.[35]

Political films addressed subjects including the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, military heroism, and Holocaust-related trauma.[36] Gitai’s House (1980), concerning a West Jerusalem house and Palestinian attachment to the land, was commissioned for Israeli television but not broadcast by it.[32] Jenin, Jenin (2002), a documentary about operations during Operation Defensive Shield, was condemned by critics as a distorted account and banned by the Israel Film Board; the Supreme Court subsequently overturned the ban on the grounds that falsehoods did not justify prohibition.[1]

The 2013 documentary Oscar nominations for Dror Moreh’s The Gatekeepers, featuring retired Shin Bet leaders, and Guy Davidi and Emad Burnat’s 5 Broken Cameras brought further attention to publicly supported political documentaries.[34] Film executives described perceived governmental pressure for more favorable portrayals of Israel, while Culture Minister Limor Livnat’s spokesman denied intervention in content.[34] Burnat also attributed refusals by festivals in Dubai, Qatar, and Egypt to screen 5 Broken Cameras to an Arab boycott of Israeli cinema; the report supplied no explanations from those festivals.[34]