Documentary
ADA
Ada Karmi Melamede is one of the most prolific architects of her generation in Israel and abroad. Through her daughter's lens, an extraordinary protagonist is revealed whose life story is intertwined with the story of the turbulent and complicated country she loves. Ada offers an unusually evocative perspective on ideas such as "place," "home," and "state" as someone working toward improving the public sphere while that sphere deteriorates and becomes increasingly fraught.
81min // JFF
Best Cinematography // JFF // 2024
Director / Yael Melamede
Prod. Company / Medalia Productions // SALTY Features
A Magical Substance Flows Into Me
Palestinian artist Jumana Manna travels through Israel and the Palestinian territories in the footsteps of Robert Lachmann, a German-Jewish ethnomusicologist who traveled to Palestine in the 1930s and explored the diverse musical traditions there. Inspired by Lachmann’s musicological studies, Manna revisits the musical traditions and their modern bearers. What do these songs sound like now when performed by Moroccan, Kurdish, or Yemenite Jews, by Samaritans, members of the urban and rural Palestinian communities, Bedouins and Coptic Christians? When a true fascination for history meets the sounds of the rababa, saz, oud and tin cans, a cultural diversity emerges that subverts the distinction between "Arab" and "Jewish". There are no national borders here, only different kitchens where people make music together.
68min // Berlinale // 2016
New Horizons International Film Festival // Grand Prix
Director / Jumana Manna
The Museum
Freshly discharged from the Israeli Army, Ra'ed, a Bedouin from an unrecognized village in the Negev desert, is determined to save his family's failing sheep herd, which is about to be sold. He plans to live off the herd by starting a roadside Bedouin hospitality restaurant. But he wasn't planning on falling in love with his cousin's Jewish girlfriend.
92min Drama // 2014
Director / Mushon Salmona
Line Producer / Tony Copti
Prod. Company / Transfax
Premiere // Haifa International Film Festival