The seventh Jerusalem International Women's Film Festival opens October 12 and runs through October 16, with screenings across the city anchored at the Jerusalem Cinematheque. Organizers say they’ve kept the program alive through some of the hardest years the venue has faced.
“Roni [Mahadav-Levin], the CEO of the Cinematheque, told me he has never known such challenging years for a festival to navigate,” said Lihi Sabag, who curates the event with Shira Meishar. For seven years, Sabag and Meishar have wrestled with budgets and logistics. “I told Roni we’ve had our seven challenging years, like the seven thin cows [in Pharaoh’s dream, interpreted by Joseph] in the Bible. Now we’re going to have seven good years, like the seven fat cows,” she said.
The Weight of October 7
The October 7 attack casts a shadow over the program. Sabag described the toll that the attack, the hostage ordeal and the violence in Gaza have taken on people who make and watch films in Israel. “More and more things come out, each year on October 7. There is emotional baggage we carry with us. It’s hard,” she said. The source gives no year for that reference.
That burden shapes the curation. In recent years, Sabag said, organizers have tried to include films that aren’t overly challenging. “Our approach is that we need to present the public with more encouraging material. We have enough horrors around us in real life.” Many films tackle heavy subjects, but she expects audiences to leave buoyant and hopeful.
The five-day program includes feature films from Israel and abroad, documentaries, shorts, discussions, question-and-answer sessions, workshops, video therapy sessions and free events. Organizers also plan screenings and events at women’s shelters, the Mazkeka, the Van Leer Institute and in haredi neighborhoods.
A Society Making Room for Its Own Critics and Survivors
The festival opens with “Wild Things,” the first full-length film by Klil Kovesh, who has made shorts over roughly the past decade. It examines identity, relationships and social values. The festival will honor actress, screenwriter, playwright, film director and social activist Hanna Azoulay Hasfari with a lifetime achievement tribute, including screenings of her works “Sh’Chur” and “Orange People.”
Sabag, an artistic director and documentarist working on two films, pointed to a gap in the industry. Competition for financial backing is fierce. She and Meishar compare films made for Israeli Film Day, held about twice a year. “Out of 35 films, there are three or maybe four directed by women,” Sabag said. “I don’t know if that is a matter of discrimination, but we want to say we have amazing female artists, and it is important to give them a stage.” The festival aims to give women’s narratives the same screen time as men’s.
The lineup extends well beyond Israel’s borders. Swiss director Petra Biondina Volpe’s “Frank & Louis” is a prison drama drawn from the real-life Gold Coats program at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, where long-term prisoners train to care for elderly inmates with dementia. French drama “La Maison des Femmes,” directed by Melisa Godet, follows a center supporting women facing abuse, partner violence and rape.
Memory and Survival
Two documentaries confront history directly. American journalist-filmmaker Marisa Fox’s “My Underground Mother” traces the life of her late mother, Tamar, through a forced labor camp in Poland, the Holocaust, pre-state Palestine and the young Israeli state. The 88-minute film took about 15 years to make and blends animation with interviews and locations. It also addresses all-female Nazi camps and how the then-incipient country treated Holocaust survivors.
“Humor is a balm for atrocity and for trauma,” Fox said. “I think that’s why Jews are such great comics. We know hardship, and we know that one of the best defense mechanisms is to laugh about it and move on.” She cited Mel Brooks’s 1967 film “The Producers,” which the source says came 59 years ago, as an example of humor illuminating injustice and trauma.
“Alice. Last Conversations,” by Nurit Jakobs Yinon, portrays Prof. Alice Shalvi, a German-born, British-bred educator who made aliyah soon after the state’s creation and championed feminism and women’s education across religions and ethnicities. The film focuses on the last year of Shalvi’s life, when she reflected on her 96 years. Jakobs Yinon will attend the screening.
Competitions include Independent Shorts, Student Films and Young Directors, the last for high school filmmakers. Tal Kushner’s “Mikveh” looks at religious women’s experiences of intimacy, relationships and motherhood.
Why This Matters: A festival that debates its own industry’s gender gap, screens Israel’s treatment of Holocaust survivors, and travels into women’s shelters and haredi neighborhoods reflects a democracy willing to scrutinize itself openly. Israeli cultural life continues under the strain of the October 7 attack and its aftermath, with organizers choosing hope over despair. From a security-minded view, that resilience is part of what a society under sustained threat is defending. Cultural institutions that keep functioning, argue with themselves and welcome diverse audiences are harder for adversaries to erase.