Since Then, Still: October 7 at the Cinematheque

Between October 8–4, films will be screened at the cinematheque addressing the trauma of Israeli society over the past three years. Films about protest and democracy, parents’ concern for their children, coping with grief and bereavement, and analyses of the films themselves, with an emphasis on music. As part of the program, conversations with female creators will also take place.

Three Years Since Black Saturday – A Conversation with Southern Female Creators במסגרת the Unbelievable Cinema Project

Three years after Black Saturday, one year after all the hostages were returned from Gaza, and amid a cursed war that refuses to end, female creators from the south gather for a conversation במסגרת the Unbelievable Cinema Project. Amid lavishly produced films, glamorous actors, and award winners, these women filmmakers who were there are making films. While the pain still shakes the body, the hand grips the camera. The event will include a screening of a collection of short films, followed by a conversation with the creators and a Q&A moderated by Shira Habaron.

Farewell Column + Director’s Talk

Carmi, a Tel Aviv journalist, is torn between his love life and disintegrating family, concern for his daughter, who is going to a protest on Balfour Street, and the forced estrangement from his autistic son. At the same time, against a backdrop gradually taking on turbulent and threatening colors, he is exposed to an aggressive hate campaign directed against him because of his journalistic writing. The boiling society around him threatens the peace of his turbulent life. Two plots rub against each other; one affects the other and also serves as a parable for its counterpart. What happens in Carmi’s family reflects the disintegration of Israeli society—but perhaps also its hope.

Oxygen

Winner of the Best Film Award at the 2025 Jerusalem Film Festival. Anat, a poetry-loving elementary-school teacher and single mother to Ido, eagerly awaits his release from the army and their planned trip to India. When his release is delayed and Ido is sent to a new war that has broken out, the condition of her shell-shocked father, Yaakov, deteriorates. Trapped between her father and her son, Anat decides to take matters into her own hands and prevent the news from reaching him, just before Ido enters Lebanon.

Hushniya – The Secrets of War + Director’s Talk

A cinematic investigative journey into a story hidden by the IDF for 50 years: the brutal massacre of 17 Israeli prisoners by Syrian soldiers in two tragic incidents on the Golan Heights front during the Yom Kippur War. An event shrouded in secrets and lies, serving as a metaphor for the first days of that terrible war, which caught the State of Israel in its weakness and disgrace.

An Incomplete Squad – Saved by the Ball + Creators’ Talk

Although they had scattered across the country, although they had lost friends and family, and although their friends had been kidnapped to Gaza, a few days after October 7, the players of the “Kfar Aza Foxes” soccer team who survived that terrible day decided to keep playing soccer. They understood that the framework, the pursuit of the rolling ball, and the arguments with the referee would protect them, even if only for 90 minutes. When they were invited to return to play in a tournament of communities from the Gaza border region, they did not know what to choose: was it right to play “in memory of” the murdered and “for the sake of” the hostages, or to refuse to return to routine?

Bye

BYE is a poetic and political film about two young actors rehearsing Romeo and Juliet in a quiet park, while reality begins to penetrate their world. The forbidden love story and hatred between the families become a mirror of contemporary Israel: the spread of poison, growing police violence, and a regime coup deteriorating toward dictatorship. The boundary between theater and life becomes blurred; the frames fill with viral images, protests, and political chaos. Through the actors’ fragile intimacy, the film explores how love, art, memory, and rebellion intertwine within a boiling reality, in which the ancient story of Romeo and Juliet takes on a new and threatening meaning in present-day Israel.

Burning Man + Director’s Talk

Winner of the Best Film Award and the Best Actor Award at the 2025 Haifa Film Festival. A man in his fifties drives his soldier son to a remote military base. They stop to smoke a cigarette along the way, drink coffee, urinate, and continue toward the heart of the desert. There they part. The son waves goodbye and walks toward the camp; the father drives home. But something stops him on the way: anxiety. Anxiety about his son’s fate. He retraces his steps and plants himself beneath a large acacia tree beside the base fence. He does not move. Thus begins a story that is a kind of “road movie”—a road movie in a parking lot. People come and go, thicken the plot, influence the protagonist, and are influenced by him. And he, Yonah Kimhi, remains beneath the tree, waiting for news or a message.

Nir Oz – Heaven | Hell

A special screening of three (6, 7, 8) episodes from Yaron Zilberman’s wide-ranging and extraordinary documentary project (“Stringed Instruments,” “Incitement,” “The Attaché”), telling the moving, tragic, and heroic story of the residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz, approximately one-third of whom were kidnapped or murdered on October 7. The three episodes were selected to present the series’ range of musical choices, matching the episodes to the narrator’s personality and the nature of each episode, while maintaining the consistency of the series’ music.

Good Morning Gaza + Creators’ Talk

Or Brandes, a psychology student and reservist who served in Gaza as a tank driver (“wagoner”), broadcasts an improvised podcast to soldiers over the communications network. From candid conversations about fear, denial, and feelings of revenge to jokes and pranks, the soldiers open up and speak frankly. Through audio excerpts from the communications network, alongside intimate footage from the battles, a window opens into the minds of the combat soldiers in the period after October 7. Courtesy of yes docu.

Whose Are You? + Director’s Talk

Ten women who married members of Kibbutz Kfar Aza formed a WhatsApp group called “Whose Are You?” to help one another find their place in the kibbutz. On the morning of October 7, they found themselves at the heart of the attack: Noa was in her ninth month of pregnancy; Elai’s home was set on fire while she was inside with her husband and young daughter; and Jessica lost Nadav, her partner and the father of her children, who fell defending the kibbutz as a member of the emergency response team. The group, born out of a sense of alienation, became an anchor of support, testimony, and survival. For more than two years, the film follows the three women through displacement, bereavement, motherhood, life out of suitcases, and uncertainty, as well as their attempt to return to life. Through their stories, an intimate female portrait emerges of Black Saturday and the life that followed—a journey of loss, friendship, and the struggle to rebuild a sense of home, and to choose whether and where it is possible to return.

Ritual – Landslide + Creators’ Talk

A year of observing Israeli society after the shock of the events of October 7. A society seeking solace in rituals: religious, nationalist, protest-related, and those of forgetting. The gaze returns to devastated Gaza and itself becomes a national ritual.

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