The Richmond Film Festival defied calls to boycott the Jewish state last year, and doubled its ticket sales in the process, according to the Virginia event’s founder. This year, the event is doubling down on Zionism.
Heather Waters, who founded the event which is in its 15th year, told JNS that there are renewed efforts to harm her event due to its support for Israel.
“It is still brewing. We have continued to forge ahead, and in fact, I think due to the last four years or so, we’ve had a lot more submissions from Israel, and so I accepted a lot more,” she said.
“They were wonderful films, and so we probably are programming about triple the amount this year,” she told JNS.
The festival, which will screen more than 180 premiers in theaters, is slated to open on Tuesday and to run six days, through Sept. 27. It will also include live music, panels and other events.
In the past, the Israeli embassy in Washington has covered travel costs for Israeli filmmakers and others to attend.
Among the documentaries to be screened are “UNraveling UNRWA,” about the United Nations agency with ties to Palestinian terror, and “TORN: The Israel-Palestine Poster War on NYC Streets.”
Israeli director Livi Kessel’s “Out At Six” is about a teenage girl’s relationship with a man who is a bit older, and “My One And Only,” by Israeli director David Tauber, tells of a newly religious woman with a new child who fears major changes in her husband.
Former yeshiva student Eden Abitbol, who served as civilian in Israel, directed “Half a Date” about the common ground that a female soldier finds with a male yeshiva student, whose military deferral paperwork she handles.
That and Mindi Ehrlich’s “Frequency,” about a mother who defies a court order to meet her son in the part after she leaves the Haredi world, are to be shown at the festival. So are the Israeli films “Dalia’s Tea Casts a Shadow on Mount Fuji” (Oren Gerner), “Dear Mom” (Maor Alteras, Gala Kaplun, Danna Levy), “Freedom Farm Sanctuary” (Taliya Finkel), “SoldOut” (Shira Haimovici, Barak Rivkind, Omer Moskovich) and “Kichka” (Gad Aisen), about Israeli cartoonist and illustrator Michel Kichka.
The Palestinian film “Adas Falasteen” (Hamdi Khalil Elhusseini, Samar Taher Lulu) is also to be screened, as are the joint Israeli-Palestinian submissions “Bella” (Zohar Shachar, Jamal Khalaily), “Holding Her Control” (Bracha Zisman Cohen) and “A Place of Her Own” (Adi Toledanu, Dana Peni-Gil).
Despite the Palestinian films scheduled to be shown, there has been “some noise the last couple of weeks where they are doing the same thing that they normally do, calling our venue sponsors,” Waters told JNS, of anti-Israel groups trying to boycott the event.
“I’m on high alert just watching it,” she told JNS.
In its efforts to build bridges, the festival plans to give a “legacy award” to Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance, this year.
The director Jon Kean is premiering “The Hollywood Rabbi,” a documentary of Hier’s life, at the festival. Kean is scheduled to moderate a panel with Hier, who will tune in remotely, at the festival.
