{"id":480308,"date":"2026-05-12T04:42:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T04:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/480308\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T04:42:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T04:42:26","slug":"docaviv-2026-reveals-the-israeli-film-lineup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/480308\/","title":{"rendered":"Docaviv 2026 reveals the Israeli film lineup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Movies that portray the complex reality of life here \u2013 from war, to art, to social history \u2013 will be the focus of this year\u2019s Docaviv, the Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival, to be held from May 28 to June 6.<\/p>\n

This 28th edition of the festival includes full-length documentaries, short films, and student films, which will be screened at venues around the city, including the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.<\/p>\n

Twelve new films have been chosen for the Israeli competition. They include Soccer for the Soul, by Avida Livny, about the Kfar Aza soccer team, who try to use their love for the game to heal after the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre. More than 60 Kfar Aza residents were killed, and 19 were taken hostage in the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n

Shalom, a film by Meital Zvieli, is about the rhino at the Tisch Family Zoological Gardens in Jerusalem, aka the Biblical Zoo, his caretakers, both Jews and Arabs, and how their oasis of animal life is affected by the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Also in the festival are Face Value, by David Ofek, about a police sketch artist who reconstructs the faces of loved ones erased from the world; No More Options \u2013 The Israeli Billion-Dollar Sting, by Hilla Medalia, the story of an international financial fraud that sent Lee Elbaz to prison, and how she believes she paid the price for an entire industry; and Three Photographers in a Swamp by Racheli Russinek and Eyal Ben Moshe, about three photographers who documented the Hula swamps in 1956 and left behind a historical record of a piece of nature that has vanished.<\/p>\n

The Beyond the Screen Competition will feature Jabotinsky Hostel, by Adi Yaffe Cohen, an intimate look at life in a hostel for autistic adults through the eyes of a counselor there.<\/p>\n

Movies about the arts and culture will include Esther, by Shaked Goren, a portrait of singer Esther Ofarim, in a story of fame and exile; The Thing Was Like That, by Adi Arbel, a look at the life and work of the acclaimed author, Meir Shalev; Black Gold: The Story of Israeli Hip-Hop, a series by Imri Dekel-Kadosh and Rom Atik about hip-hop in Hebrew; and LAISHA \u2013 The Story of a Woman\u2019s Magazine, by Anna Somershaf, about the publication that has shaped Israeli women\u2019s lives for 78 years.<\/p>\n

Docaviv will also present student films from Israel\u2019s leading film schools, including the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, Ma\u2019aleh School of Film and Television, Sapir Academic College\u2019s School of Audio and Visual Arts, Tel Aviv University\u2019s Steve Tisch School of Film and Television, and the Minshar School of Art.<\/p>\n

\"BlackBlack Gold (credit: Green Productions, KAN 11)Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality Prize for Democracy and Freedom of Creation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This year, the festival will introduce the Documentary Highlights in collaboration with Schweppes competition, in which Schweppes will give a prize for groundbreaking documentary work that shows innovative, creative thinking and a unique view of real moments.<\/p>\n

There will also be a Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality Prize for Democracy and Freedom of Creation.<\/p>\n

The Audience Favorite competition will return to Docaviv, which will give festivalgoers the chance to choose their favorite Israeli film from among all the Israeli films in the program.<\/p>\n

The prize is dedicated to the memory of the late Tehran series creator Dana Eden, and the winning film will receive a cash prize donated by her partner, Shula Spiegel. The winner will be announced several days after the festival ends.<\/p>\n

Docaviv is also launching 20 Under 40, a project intended to highlight the next generation of documentary creators who have already established impressive bodies of work and achieved notable success in Israel and abroad.<\/p>\n

The festival will hold a retrospective of the films of Ram Loevy, one of Israel\u2019s most respected documentary filmmakers.<\/p>\n

Another notable event will be the Israeli premiere of Tom Shoval\u2019s A Letter to David \u2013 The Complete Version, which was shown at this year\u2019s Berlin International Film Festival.<\/p>\n

The film is a portrait of hostage David Cunio, who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7 and released after two years; the documentary was updated after he returned. The screening will take place in the presence of the Cunio family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Movies that portray the complex reality of life here \u2013 from war, to art, to social history \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[2054,18,117,597,19,17,327,210155,1383],"class_list":{"0":"post-480308","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-documentary","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-film","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-tel-aviv-international-documentary-festival","16":"tag-the-october-7-massacre"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116559777246086480","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}