The Spy Family

The story of Yamin Masika, the “Don Quixote" of Israeli cinema — a director, social activist, and cultural entrepreneur who played a pivotal role in transforming Mizrahi culture from the margins to the mainstream. In the 1990s, after repeated rejections by the Israeli film industry, Masika began creating underground, low-budget films and music videos featuring Mizrahi artists like Avi Bitter, Tamir Gal, Moshe Cohen, Sarit Hadad, and Zehava Ben. Though ridiculed and dismissed by the establishment, these films resonated deeply with audiences who had been excluded from mainstream media for decades, leading to a cultural revolution.

An Israeli car and a Palestinian car are stuck in traffic in front of a barricade at the entrance of Jerusalem, coming from the Dead Sea. Yuval and Mahmoud, both seven years old boys, find its much more fun to pass the time playing with one another. But when Mahmoud's father tries to cut into the other's lane, Yuval's father bumps into his car in an attempt to prevent him, and things start to get complicated. What began as a game becomes an outright battle over a plastic Batman doll.

Rabbi David Buzaglo was the greatest Hebrew liturgical poet of the twentieth century. Born in Morocco in 1903, his literary output had a major impact on a community of hundreds of thousands of people. From his prolific period in the Diaspora to the years he spent in a ruptured Israel, Buzaglo's poetry initiated an abrupt shift in Sephardic liturgical writing, but it also served as a vital link between the modern era and a tradition that dates back to Spanish Jewry's Golden Age. But Buzaglo was more than just a great poet. The actions he took at seminal moments in history had a critical impact in shaping the identity of Maghreb Jews. This film is an intimate look at Buzaglo's life and career, from its roots in the rich tradition of Hebrew poetry in Morocco through the liturgical revolution in Israel.

She lived in Cairo, Paris, and New York, but died in an old-age home in Givatayim, Israel. She was charismatic and admired, but only a few people actually knew her well during her life. She was the first to write of Levantine and Mizrachi identities, Director Rafael Balulu goes on a journey in the footsteps of “Levantine thinker” and author, and through encounters with her friends in Paris, with intellectuals in the Mizrachi discourse, and with Levantine artists, he not only draws a portrait of this impressive thinker and writer, but also chronicles the trajectory of Levantine identity in Israel as a cultural option.