The Edward S. Finkelstein Harrisburg Jewish Film Festival

Documentary (Israel, 2020, 46 minutes, Hebrew w/subtitles)

Written and directed by Yulie Cohen

When the Israeli Declaration of Independence was drafted in May, 1948, every word, every comma, every concept led to hours of debate. In Our Natural Right, the grandchildren of the signers of the Declaration return to the hall in Tel Aviv where the document was signed, to reminisce about their grandparents and the stories they told, and to share their own feelings, often mixed, of pride and concern over the state of their nation seventy-five years on. Can the descendants of the people who established the state agree on one correct path for Israel? Our Natural Right raises once again the issues that the State of Israel has never stopped wrestling with, seventy-five years after first attempting to tackle them.

The Edward S. Finkelstein Harrisburg Jewish Film Festival

Comedy (Israel, 2022, 98 mins, Hebrew w/ subtitles)

Screenplay by Erez Tadmor, Hava Divon & Yaki Reisner; Directed by Erez Tadmor

It’s time for Moti Bernstein – handsome, smart, an ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi from a “good

family” – to get married. With two matchmakers and two determined parents on the lookout, it

would seem an easy task to find his perfect match. And it might have been, had Moti not fallen

for the one woman he can never have – his sister’s friend Nechama, whose Moroccan Mizrahi

roots make her as unthinkable to Moti’s parents as a bride for their perfect son as Juliet was for

Romeo. Caught between his own desire and the taboos of such an “intermarriage,” Moti is

forced to take drastic action. As a review in The Times of Israel remarked of the story, “The ultra-

Orthodox may take their matchmaking seriously, but love is love…”

The Edward S. Finkelstein Harrisburg Jewish Film Festival

9:00 a.m. – Nosh

10:00 a.m. – Film screening

11:30 a.m. – Discussion, led by Dr. Helen Khanzhina

THE LITTLE TRAITOR

Drama (Israel/US, 2007, 89 minutes, English, Hebrew w/subtitles)

Written & directed by Lynn Roth, based on the novel Panther in the Basement by Amos Oz

Palestine, 1947. Eleven-year-old Proffy Liebowitz has lived his entire life under the British Mandate, and, like his parents and everyone he knows, he wants nothing more than for the occupying British to get out of his land. He and his two friends spend most of their time

plotting ways to terrorize and/or blow up British troops, until one evening, out after curfew, Proffy actually meets one, when he is seized by one Sergeant Dunlop (Alfred Molina). 

Instead of arresting the boy, Dunlop deposits him back home with an invitation to visit him at the British military headquarters. Proffy takes him up on the offer in the hope of gaining intelligence for himself and his gang, but instead what ensues is a cherished friendship that Proffy must keep secret from his family and friends.

The Edward S. Finkelstein Harrisburg Jewish Film Festival

Documentary (Israel, 2022, 69 minutes, Hebrew w/ subtitles)

Written and directed by Yoram Ivry

A fascinating, unexpected story: that of the children who grew up on Israeli Air Force bases in the 1960s and ‘70s. In a civilian housing complex surrounded by a military base where his father was a fighter pilot, director Yoram Ivry recalls a childhood where runways were for bicycling and fighter jets were for climbing, where he and his peers felt protected, secure, and free. Other children from that time, now middle-aged and beyond, recount these times in interviews that reveal a darker reality as well: what it was like to grow up in the shadow of wars, where heroic, larger-than-life, dashing pilot fathers took to the skies and, sometimes, didn’t come home.

The Edward S. Finkelstein Harrisburg Jewish Film Festival

Comedy-drama (Israel, 2007, 90 minutes, Hebrew w/ subtitles)

Written by Jonathan Paz & Joshua Sobol; directed by Jonathan Paz

The great exodus begins at night. Men, women and children abandon their homes, taking with them everything that isn’t nailed down, as well as much that is. 

When the sun rises over this old kibbutz isolated in the Hills of Galilee, not a living soul can be seen -– except in the kibbutz’s old people’s home, where twelve senior citizens awaken to find themselves abandoned, left to fend for themselves and ward off the creditors who arrive to take possession of their deeply indebted collective. Fortunately, these are not any old senior citizens – these are the founders of the kibbutz decades before -– and despite their age, it takes little to dust off their pioneer spirit and start to rebuild.