Eithan Weitz

A month and a half ago, everything seemed to be going well for Nir Bergman. His new film, Intimate Grammar was the favorite to win at the Israeli Academy Awards, and a release date was scheduled to a day after the ceremony. But then things took a turn for the worse.

This week in Israel, television's The Mediator returns for its third season. We normally don't discuss television on the site, but it's worth mentioning that there is a significant television series ideas output that is landing in the U.S. It was announced that Fox has acquired the rights for an American remake. Quite a few Israeli TV shows found their ways to American smaller screens in recent years via remakes (the most known would be In Treatment), but this particular case is a little bit weird, for the creators themselves admit to be have been inspired by such American crime myths as The Sopranos and The Godfather.

Along with the latest intriguing projects from Eran Kolirin (The Band's Visit) and Joseph Cedar (Beaufort), Fluk's Never Too Late could be the little gem that catches everyone off their guards.

The Flood proved to be a warm, crowd-pleaser, with superb performances especially from veteran actress Ronit Elkabetz (The Band's Visit) and Michael Moshonov (Lebanon). The biggest surprise was Nattiv's mature and moderate pacing -- a fluid directing hand that tremendously helped the unraveling of this tale about a dysfunctional family disintegrating to even smaller pieces as the elder autistic son unexpectedly comes into their lives again.

Sharon Amrani was perhaps the most promising director from the Israeli Movie industry in the late 1990's. Bonfire Night, his graduation film from the Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem, won several awards, and his follow up, a 50 min. TV drama entitled Goodbye Cousin, picked up plenty of praise from both from critics and his colleagues alike. He even begun directing a TV series called Jerusalem Mix, but then disaster struck...