Holding Her Ground

Leningrad, 1970. A group of young Jewish dissidents plot to hijack an empty plane and escape the USSR. Caught by the KGB a few steps from boarding, they were sentenced to years in the gulag and two were sentenced to death; they never got on a plane. 45 years later, filmmaker Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov reveals the compelling story of her parents, leaders of the group, "heroes" in the West but "terrorists" in Russia, even today.

This modern adaptation of S.Y. Agnon’s story takes place in a small city at the edge of the desert. In this barren landscape, Tirza, a young woman who lives alone with her father, becomes entranced by Akaviah Mazal, a lecturer at the college where she is studying. As she gets lost in the secrets of their entwined past, enchantment turns to obsession and Tirza does everything in her power to get Mazal’s attention and win his heart. Despite the warnings and fears of those closest to her, Tirza pursues her dangerous quest for love. Will she succeed in righting the injustices of the past and break the tragic cycle of fate, or will she simply perpetuate it?

An impossible love story - Huda, an Israeli Arab, and Alex, recently immigrated to Israel, overcome all difficulties.

When Mooky is fifteen, his beloved father dies a sudden death, and his place is taken by Yanek - an impulsive, rough, yet generous man who is regarded as a controversial figure due to his doings in the Holocaust in the Zonder Commando. He brutally invades Mooky's life and turns it upside-down. During Mookys teenage years, which are affected by his seductive mother Tinka, he deals with unfulfilled love for one girl and a dominated relationship with another. One day Mooky returns to his mother's home, deranged, and does something from which there is no turning back. Twenty years later, Mooky must decide whether to attend his mother's funeral and re-open his wounds of the past.

When fans of the football club of Beitar Jerusalem make their way to Teddy Stadium, they hardly ever notice Nadia as she enters and makes her way to a classical ballet studio beneath the bleachers. The ceiling trembles, the cheering fills the room, but the studio remains isolated from Jerusalem's reality. A decade ago Nadia and her mother, Nina Timofeyeva, a prima ballerina at the Bolshoi Ballet, left Moscow for Jerusalem and set up the studio. It was a professional suicide. Ballet and football make for a surrealistic combination.

Georgian-born Israeli artist Meir Pichhadze never let emotion run his life. He hated nostalgia, but in the spring of 1999, he returned to Georgia with his friend Aaron and the spirit of his dark-eyed sister Makvalla. She died by suicide a year after arriving in Israel and it is said she died of longings for her homeland. It turns out that nostalgia was in fact simmering inside Meir and it led him back to Georgia to explore some old wounds.

"Anusim" - They are everywhere - Ultra-Orthodox Jews. They cannot be identified. Within them there is a struggle between the inner truth and the outside world. How did they become "Anusim"? Why are they and not others? The common line is a basic requirement in Orthodox society. You have to be 'someone' to take a step that takes you out of the line you were born into. Anusim are talented people, often with a rebellious personality. Years of research often make us indifferent to human encounters, not in this case.