by Amy Stone

Our Reviewer’s Picks at the Other Israel Film Festival

Women directors are no longer a big deal, so take note of these four women-
made films worth seeing no matter who made them. Check the OIFF website for
additional films and events.

Breaking Bread (Director Beth Hawk; JCC Sunday, Nov 17, 4:30 pm) At last, food as the bridge to understanding in a film
festival that’s hungry for hope. Dr. Nof Atamna-Ismaeel was first Muslim Arab to
win Israel’s Master Chef competition. The microbiologist from an Arab town in
northern Israel is using her food festival for social change.

Border of Pain (Director Ruth Walk; international premiere JCC Wednesday,
Nov. 20, 6:15 pm) Food and medicine, two ways
to break down walls. The sturdy, head-covered Gaza and West Bank women
determined to get permission to enter Israel for life-saving hospital care. The
Israeli doctors and volunteers who are part of an elaborate health care
bureaucracy knitting together Israel and Palestinian Authority ministries. And the
amazing Dalia Bassa, health coordinator for Israel’s civil administration. Blonde
hair, pink shirt, driving from border crossings to hospitals, her cell phone never
stops ringing.

A Fish Tale (Director Emmanuelle Mayer; JCC Harlem Saturday, Nov. 16, 6:30 pm/ JCC Wednesday, Nov. 20, 8 pm) Israelis give an uneducated man from Ghana the skills to bring modern fish farming back home. Israel also gives his wife the drive for a better life outside Africa. Years of filming the couple and their growing number of beautiful children document a tiny piece of Israel’s fraught foreign worker policies.

See for free –
— Short films JCC Saturday, Nov. 16, 2 pm / Harlem JCC Sunday, Nov. 17, 3 pm
— Panel – What Is Left? JCC Saturday, Nov. 16, 6 pm. Experts explore the
polarization of Israeli society and the growing divide between left and right.

Head for the bar –
Other Israel Underground screening of Israeli TV series Muna episodes 1&2 in
West Harlem café-bar-music at Silvana. Charge for Silvana screening Sunday,
Nov. 17, 6:30; free screening JCC, Saturday, Nov. 16, 4 pm. Created and
starring singer, actor, song writer Mira Awad as Palestinian Israeli photographer
confronting Israeli military escalation in Gaza, 2014.

See you at the movies.

Amy Stone is a contributing editor at Lilith and one of Lilith’s founding mothers.