Eithan Weitz

The nominations for the Israeli Film Academy awards (The Ophirs) were announced this week and as expected, Nir Bergman's "Intimate Grammar" is at the top of the leader board with 12 nominations, but there are a few more surprises worth noting.

Eight years after his hugely successful drama Broken Wings, Nir Bergman return to feature filmmaking comes via the big screen adaptation of David Grossman's novel. It tells of a young boy in 1960's Israel, who's physical growth mysteriously comes to a sudden stop.

Hands down, Ivgy's And on the Third Day is the best Israeli film of 2010. With several connecting stories of men being cruel towards women (physically, sexually, and psychologically), with a concluding apocalypse, this is a Magnolia-type picture minus the frogs.

Giuseppe Capotondi is a still photographer, a music-video and commercials director from Italy, with The Double Hour he is announcing himself as a filmmaker to watch out for. A triple winner at the Venice Film Festival, it's difficult to describe a film that changes the rules and twists the narrative inside out every fifteen minutes.

Producer and editor of mostly documentary films for the better part of the last decade, one could say Jeff Malmberg was primed up for his directing debut. After causing a sensation at SXSW, Malmberg's Marwencol visits Mark Hogancamp, a young American, who was attacked and brutally beaten about a decade ago. After recovering from a coma, Mark started building a miniature city as a form of therapy.