27-31.10.2025
Israeli Film Competition
Narrative and Documentary Films
For the first time, the festival, in collaboration with and supported by the Beracha Foundation, is hosting a competition for feature-length films created by Israeli women directors — both narrative and documentary.
The competition showcases a selection of personal, bold, and complex works that portray Israeli society through intimate, female perspectives and a distinct artistic vision.
The films range from personal to social cinema, from imagination to reality, reflecting the power and significance of the female voice in contemporary Israeli cinema.
Judges
Professor Raya Morag
Full professor of film and visual culture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on the relationships between cinema, trauma, and ethics in the contexts of war, terror, and genocide. She is the founder of the “Conqueror’s Trauma” paradigm and one of the key architects of a new research discourse in trauma studies that centers the figure of the perpetrator. She has published several books and received numerous awards. In addition to her academic work, she writes a film column for Haaretz – Culture and Literature.
Julie Shles
Julie Shlez is a director, screenwriter, and producer, known for her award-winning narrative and documentary films, including Afula Express, Penniless, Sanjin, and The Steif Effect.
Tal Shefi
Tal Shefi is a film editor, screenwriter, editorial consultant, mentor, and director.
She studied film in New York and Los Angeles and is a graduate of the Film Department at Beit Zvi.
Tal has edited, written, and served as lead editor on dozens of narrative, documentary, and museum projects produced in Israel, Europe, and India. Her edited projects have won numerous international awards, including the Editing Award for The Camerawoman.
Her first feature-length documentary as a director, Not Your Life, premiered at the Haifa International Film Festival in 2013 and won the Promising Creator Award at the International Women’s Film Festival in Rehovot. She is currently working on her second and third films.
