THE Embassy of Israel in Manila, in partnership with the Film Development Council of the Philippines, will promote and showcase the cultural and cinematographic features of Israeli films to Filipino audiences through the 15th Israeli Film Festival on March 13 and 14.
Gather family and friends to experience the artistry of Israeli cinema with four critically acclaimed Israeli films on the two-day movie parade at the Cinema 3 of Bonifacio High Street Cinemas in Central Square, Bonifacio Global City in Taguig City. All are presented in Hebrew, with English subtitles.
Abulele (Rated PG, March 13, 4 p.m.): Ten-year-old Adam meets Abulele, a huge, friendly, invisible ancient monster. The two become best friends, but when a government special forces unit arrives to capture the latter, Adam will have to put his own past behind him in order to save his friend, learning along the way that “when you really love someone, you’re never really alone.”
Manpower (Rated PG, March 13, 7 p.m.): Meir Cohen is a decorated police officer who barely earns a living. His new assignment of deporting African migrant workers from Israel “against their own free will” teaches him that foreigners are not the only ones who have no future in his country. Other plotlines intertwine with Meir’s story: an Israeli-Filipino boy fighting for recognition; a taxi driver whose children are migrating to a distant country; and a veteran migrant worker who is forced to decide whether to leave or to hide until trouble passes.
Noam Kaplan’s movie delicately sketches a portrait of four men in crisis. Moving between scathing realism and subtle irony, the film raises questions of belonging and uprooting, exile and emigration, home and family.
Saving Neta (Rated G, March 14, 4 p.m.): Four women with nothing in common find their individual lives profoundly altered by an encounter with a mysterious stranger. A collection of stories spanning the seasons, each episode introduces a woman “on the verge:” a career police officer unable to cope with the stresses of work and her teenage daughter; a lesbian cellist ambivalent about raising a child with her partner; a mother who plans to tell her children she’s getting a divorce; and a businesswoman who goes home for her mother’s funeral and must institutionalize her mentally challenged sister. Impacting each of these fractured lives is Neta, a drifter struggling with his own personal crisis.
Laces (Rated G, March 14, 7 p.m.) tells the story of a complicated relationship between an aging father and his son with special needs whom he abandoned while the latter was still a young boy. Sixty-year-old Reuben’s kidneys are failing, and his son Gadi, 35, wants to donate one of his own to help save his father’s life. However, the transplant committee objects to the procedure claiming that Rueben, acting as Gadi’s sole legal guardian, does not have the right to authorize such an invasive procedure. The son, who recently lost his mother, is afraid of losing his father, as well. He feels he finally has the chance to do something meaningful: to become a man and stand on his own. He is furious with the committee’s decision and sets out to fight for his right to save his father’s life. Through the film’s portrayal of a relationship full of love, rejection and codependency, it manages to shed some light and question the importance of human life, human connection and if life is even possible without either one of them.
Tickets are available via www.sureseats.com and Bonifacio High Street Cinemas at P150 To score free tickets, follow Israel in the Philippines’s Facebook page and #15thIsraeliFilmFest for surprise announcements.