Eithan Weitz

Looking a little bit further down the line, the first of the 2011 Israeli film harvest is scheduled to be released in late March. The film is entitled Footnote, and it is Joseph Cedar's long awaited follow-up to the Oscar-nominated Beaufort.

The Sundance Film Festival announced their line-up last week and since I'm the site's Israeli reporter, I'll be putting the emphasis the one homegrown film that managed to crack the festival's line-up (short film announcements are being made next week so that status might change). The World Cinema Dramatic Competition line-up will include the Israeli film entitled Restoration (the original Israeli title translates as Good Morning Mr. Fidelman).

Update: Two weeks ago we reported that ARTE France is putting their financial support of Israeli films on hold (see below). This week Jérôme Clément, the president of ARTE, is visiting Israel, and in an interview to Ha'aretz newspaper he overturned the decision." ARTE has no intention of putting a stop to the successful collaboration".

Award season is among us on both sides of the Atlantic. Today the European Film Academy handed out their annual awards in Tallinn, Estonia and the big winner of the evening was Roman Polanski's Ghost Writer, claiming six awards, including Best Picture. Lebanon Israeli's Golden Lion winner of 2009, collected a pair: the award for European discovery, handed out to first time directors ("it's an honor being discovered when you're close to 50", said 48 year old director Samuel Maoz upon receiving the award), and the award for Best Cinematography, handed to Giora Bejach, for his extraordinary work, shooting an (almost) entire film from the POV of a tank.

This time around, Israeli cinema has gone the horror genre route and on 1st December (which coincides with the eve of Hanukah), the horror film Rabies (the disease, not the plural of Rabbi) will be released - the pic is directed by a film critic-turned director Aharon Kesheles and co-directed by Navot Papushado.