Hersonski’s A Film Unfinished and Eldar’s Precious Life Making International Waves

While the last decade has been a prosperous one for the Israeli film industry with the output of quality feature “fiction” films, the Israeli documentary scene is creating an even a bigger buzz. About 20 fiction features are created each year in Israel and the number of annual Israeli documentaries is more than a double that number. This year, a pair of Ophir Award nominated documentaries are receiving a lot of buzz-worthy attention.

Yael Hersonski’s A Film Unfinished has already won a few awards in the international festival circuit (including Best International Feature at this year’s Hotdocs), and is receiving a limited release in the U.S via Oscilloscope Pictures (Adam Yauch recently called BS on the MPAA), while Shlomi Eldar’s Precious Life received a special jury mention in the last Jerusalem Film Festival (where “A Film Unfinished” won best documentary), and last week it was announced that it will screen at the upcoming Toronto Int. Film Festival – North American’s top festival. The vegas odds are on Hersonski’s “A Film Unfinished” for the Israeli Academy award for Best Documentary, but it appears that “Precious Life” is rapidly closing the gap.

A Film Unfinished is an stirring document, dealing with the do’s and don’ts of filmmaking. Through the story of a lost film the Nazis made in the Ghetto, Hersonski asks questions concerning the moral limits of the visuals allowed on screen in a documentary or in a fiction film, and ponders over the difference between documentary and fiction. It’s a gripping film that will move any spectator. Too bad the MPAA are confused in their mandate.

Shlomi Eldar is a journalist in Channel 10 news, heading the Arab desk (click here to see him interviewing the leader of the Hamas in Gaza). During the last war in Gaza, Eldar couldn’t get into the war zone and do his regular job, but this didn’t mean that Eldar would remain inactive. He received a phone call from a doctor in an Israeli hospital, asking him to help save a life of a young boy. Eldar found out that the boy is the son of a Palestinian woman who already lost two children to a rare disease, and the third one, suffering from immune deficiency (commonly known as “bubble boy” syndrome), and was treated in an Israeli hospital. While the news media filed reports from Gaza, Eldar but his energy into this subject matter first by reporting on this story which would see Israelis donate money towards saving the boy. Digging further, the reporter turned docu filmmaker discovers that the mother wishes to see her boy grow up to be a martyr, blowing up Jews in a Jerusalem bus. But is it really what she wants? “Precious Life” becomes this a thought-provoking document of the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict via this volatile first person account.