Documentary Film
Festival at the National
Library of Israel

Program

Sunday 14.08

Back in Berlin

Two childhood friends travel to Berlin to uncover family secrets: Manuel’s great uncle directed the notorious Nazi film “Jude Suss”, while Bobby discovers the tale of his father’s Holocaust survival.

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Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time

When Robert Weide started making a film about Kurt Vonnegut, he was just a young fan. In 40 years of working together, the two became close friends, and their relationship sheds a new, personal, and fascinating light on the literary master’s tumultuous life story.

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Be My Voice

The inspiring story of Irani-exiled Masih Alinejad, her fight against the Iranian regime's hijab laws and her viral movement My Stealthy Freedom

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Breaking Wells

Before you watch “The Water Wells” (1982) at the festival, discover the personal letters, unpublished manuscripts and drafts of the three cultural giants featured in the film: Naomi Shemer, Amos Oz, and Amos Kenan. As we take a close look at the documents in the National Library’s collections and archives, we will consider the political questions raised in the film and discuss the connection between the personal and the political, and the ways artists view the burning issues of their time. The tour will be conducted in Hebrew

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Opening Event

Film screening of “The Water Wells” and a conversation between members of the "next generation": Leli Shemer, Shlomzion Keinan, Fanya Oz Salzberger and Canaan Kirschenbaum

The Water Wells

The Water Wells

Moti Kirschenbaum brings together two giants of Israeli culture from opposite ends of its political spectrum: Naomi Shemer from the right and Amos Kenan from the left. Set against Israel’s landscapes, their conversations about Zionism and their love for Israel and its people soon reveal that the chasm between them is not so wide after all.

Against the background of the country's landscapes, Moti Kirschenbaum brings together two Israeli cultural giants from both ends of the political spectrum: Naomi Shemer on the right and Amos Keinan on the left, to talk about Zionism and the love of the people and the country. It soon seems that the two ends are not so far apart.

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Monday 15.08

Seminar

Into the Archives: the Role of Archive Footage in Documentary Filmmaking

Session 1: In Search of Lost Time: Ways of Using Archive Footage

Session 1: In Search of Lost Time: Ways of Using Archive Footage

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Session 2: Reassigning the Meaning of Archive Footage

Session 2: Reassigning the Meaning of Archive Footage

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Session 3: Private sessions with Attorney Noam Solan from the National Library’s legal department

Session 3: Private sessions with Attorney Noam Solan from the National Library’s legal department

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The Artist’s Daughter, Oil on Canvas

The Artist’s Daughter, Oil on Canvas

She visits the self-portrait exhibition of a famous painter. She is the artist’s daughter, but only few people know that. As she stares at her father's images, she feels a great sense of absence. How does one film absence?

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Turn Your Body to the Sun

Turn Your Body to the Sun

Sandar, a Soviet soldier captured by the Nazis, returned to Mother Russia only to be condemned as a traitor and sent to Siberia. Through his diaries, his letters, and colorized archive footage, his daughter tries to piece together his silenced story, and with it—the stories of millions like him.

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O, Collecting Eggs Despite the Times

O, Collecting Eggs Despite the Times

German ornithologist Max Schönwetter collected, categorized, and drew nearly twenty thousand bird eggs with unwavering dedication. In the chaos of war, he and his colleagues held on to this passion as a way to escape a ruined, lost, carpet-bombed Europe into a place where everything made sense like before.

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Novorossiya

A shot on the Ukrainian eastern fronts of Donetsk where the pro-Russian separatists had been waging a war against Ukraine even before Putin’s full-scale invasion in 2022. The future is uncertain, but in Donbass life continues despite bombardments flaring up at every sunset. This is just another day for an American communist foreign fighter, a captain nostalgic of the Soviet Union, an opera singer and twoyoung metal band players.

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Collecting Texts Despite the Times

Collecting Texts Despite the Times

See the items that made it to our library against all odds, and hear their unexpected stories. Drafts saved in the last minute from being destroyed, burned books and manuscripts, poems nearly lost to time, and banned texts kept secret and hidden from all—each of these found its way to the National Library’s collections by some twist of fate, despite the circumstances. The tour will be conducted in Hebrew

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1341 Frames of Love and War

1341 Frames of Love and War

From an archive of over half a million negatives taken by Israel‘s most celebrated war photographer Micha Bar-Am, 1341 Frames reveals an epic journey of self-doubt and questioning through the camera. 1341 Frames is a complex love letter to the power, beauty and horror of photographic imagery.

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Tuesday 16.08

Mosinzon

The documentary Mosinzon sheds light on the unsolved mystery of the writer that truly re-embodied the phrase TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION.

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Fragile Memory

As Alzheimer’s chips away at the mind of renowned Odesa-based cinematographer Leonid Burlaka, his grandson, filmmaker Igor Ivanko, pores over damaged old film rolls he has found, in an attempt to get more closely acquainted with both his grandfather and Soviet-era Ukrainian films.

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Infinity: According to Florian

Infinity: According to Florian

At the heart of Kyiv, Florian Yuriev’s architectural magnum opus is in danger. Yuriev, a 90-year-old painter, musician, architect, filmmaker, and art theorist, refuses to back down. Despite his age, he cannot stop making art, innovating, and provoking the mainstream.

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Words That Remain

Words That Remain

Six people recall the languages that cradled their childhoods: Judeo-Spanish, Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Persian. Today, the languages themselves are dying but they left traces that still affect those who heard them as children.

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Dark Red Forest

Dark Red Forest

Each winter, 20 thousand nuns embark on a journey through the snowy expanse of the Tibetan Plateau. This mesmerizing intimate film follows them through one hundred very cold days of physical and spiritual tribulations, as their inner landscapes become one with the Tibetan wilderness.

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The National Library's Collection of Curiosities

The National Library's Collection of Curiosities

This may come as a surprise, but the National Library is home to more than a few items that aren’t bookish in the slightest. Coming from a wide range of times and places, these special artifacts were given to the library for safe keeping, and each has its own weird and wonderful story. On this tour, you will encounter Moshe Montefiore's personal set of tefillin, an ivory medallion that belonged to the daughter of false prophet Jacob Frank, a Tu B'Shevat planting pouch, and much more. The tour will be conducted in Hebrew

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The National Library's Collection of Curiosities

The National Library's Collection of Curiosities

This may come as a surprise, but the National Library is home to more than a few items that aren’t bookish in the slightest. Coming from a wide range of times and places, these special artifacts were given to the library for safe keeping, and each has its own weird and wonderful story. On this tour, you will encounter Moshe Montefiore's personal set of tefillin, an ivory medallion that belonged to the daughter of false prophet Jacob Frank, a Tu B'Shevat planting pouch, and much more. The tour will be conducted in Hebrew

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What’s Happening to me Lately?

What’s Happening to me Lately?

Israeli cultural icon Rivka Michaeli travels to her children in America. Between a foreign country where her family put down roots and the homeland she loves and hurts for – Rivka is walking the thin line, trying to find balance and hope within.

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Wednesday 17.08

The Kaiser of Atlantis

The Kaiser of Atlantis

The true story of composer Viktor Ullmann's chamber opera, completed by him in Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt and rediscovered, thanks to a miraculous chain of events.

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The Treasures of Crimea

The Treasures of Crimea

The travelling exhibition Crimea – “Gold and Treasures of the Black Sea” is being held hostage in the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam. Since the annexation of Crimea by Putin, the art collection became stateless. The treasures became a tool in a power struggle between Russia and Ukraine, both claiming the collection as their own. The Netherlands unwillingly became a referee. To which party should the exhibition be returned?

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The Seven Years of Absalon

The Seven Years of Absalon

The story of Meir Eshel, who reinvented himself as an artist named "Absalon", quickly rising to art-scene stardom. Years after his tragic death at the age of 28, Absalon's younger brother Dani is tasked with selling his final work.

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The Other City

An intimate maturation film in which Livi, a photography student, documents her four closest friends - young artists in downtown Haifa. Over the years, the instability in their lives raises questions about success, self-destruction, and the price of their dreams.

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Crows Are White

Crows Are White

Director Ahsen Nadeem leads a double life. To find a solution for his problem, he travels to a remote Japanese monastery on a scenic mountaintop—home to an ancient, secretive sect of Buddhist monks who perform extreme acts of endurance. Will he find answers there, or are they inside him already?

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The Camera of Doctor Morris

The Camera of Doctor Morris

Everyone in Eilat, Israel's southernmost city, knows Dr. Morris and the crocodile Clarence who grew up in his garden. It turns out he left his wife and children hours of personal documentation in 8 mm, which re-tells the family's bittersweet story.

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Native: A Tour of the A. B. Yehoshua Archive

Native: A Tour of the A. B. Yehoshua Archive

Discover A. B. Yehoshua’s personal letters, early manuscripts and unpublished works, kept in his personal archive here at the National Library. Get a rare glimpse into Yehoshua’s creative process and follow his growth into one of Israel’s most prominent authors, as well as a major public and political figure. The tour will be conducted in Hebrew

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The Last Chapter of A. B. Yehoshua

The Last Chapter of A. B. Yehoshua

A humorous, intimate, and charming portrait of one of Israel's greatest novelists, A.B Yehoshua, who, despite his struggle with cancer, continued to host friends, have discussions, write, and shape the Israeli discourse in his final years.

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Thursday 18.08

Cesária Évora

Cesária Évora

Cesária Évora’s incredible voice paved her way from a poverty-stricken childhood in a former slave colony to the world’s most iconic concert halls. Chock full of previously unseen footage, the film follows the ups and downs in the story of the celebrated singer, who never let anyone run her life.

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Razzouk Tattoo

Wassim Razzouk, the sole heir of 500-year lineage of Coptic Christians tattoo artists from Jerusalem, sets out to complete his collection of ancient wooden stencils before they are lost forever. during his journey he discovers that his family is hiding not only stencils, but haunting secrets.

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Closing Event

Film screening of “The Albums - Eviatar Banai” and live performance: Eviatar Banai - The first album accompanied by a string quartet

The Albums: Eviatar Banai

The Albums: Eviatar Banai

He was only 23 when his debut album, filled with pain and vulnerability, captured Israeli hearts and became a milestone in local music history. But Eviatar Banai chose a different path, leaving his dark, enchanting album behind in favor of his newfound faith. Now, he revisits the old songs as a religious man and artist.

Docotext Festival invites you to watch the film: "The Albums - Eviatar Banai", return with him to the turbulent days that gave birth to his first masterpiece album, and after the screening enjoy a special performance by Eviatar Banai and a string quartet with all the songs from the first album and hits from the rich repertoire.

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