The 24th edition of Docaviv, Israel’s biggest celebration of documentary film and the only Israeli festival dedicated exclusively to documentary cinema, returns to the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and select venues around the city from May 26 to June 5.
The festival will present a total of 122 films, of which 26 are world premieres and 3 are international premieres, along with some brand new awards, a special focus programme on Ukraine, guests from around the world, Q&As with filmmakers, open-air screenings, industry events, and more. A selection of films will also be available online.
This year’s guests of honor are directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West (RBG), who will attend the festival with three of their latest films, which center on larger-than-life women and non-binary people: Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Downabout the US congresswoman; My Name Is Pauli Murray about poet, lawyer, activist and scholar Pauli Murray; and Juliaabout renowned chef Julia Child.
Docaviv 2022 will open with the world premiere of the US-Israeli The Devil Speaks: Eichmann’s Lost Confession by Yariv Mozer screening in the Israeli Competition, in which original recording reels of an interview with Adolf Eichmann are revealed, contradicting his later claims that he merely followed orders.
International Competition
In the International Competition, which will present 12 films from across the globe, the Ukrainian-Slovakian co-production Fragile Memory by Igor Ivanko will celebrate its international premiere. As Alzheimer’s chips away at the mind of renowned Odesa-based cinematographer Leonid Burlaka, his grandson, filmmaker Igor Ivanko, dives deep into the damaged old film rolls he has found, in an attempt to get more closely acquainted with both his grandfather and Soviet-era Ukrainian films.
Other films in this section include Sundance grand prix winner All That Breathes by Shaunak Sen about two brothers who rescue birds of prey in New Delhi; Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love; Meet Me in the Bathroom by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace; and IDFA winner Children of the Mist by Diem Ha Lie.
Shorts Competition
This year’s Shorts Competition will feature two world premieres: Barbora Bereznakova’s Strigov, about the emotional farewell of those who stay behind in a tiny, slowly disappearing Slovakian community after their matriarch dies; and Geamăna by Matthäus Wörle, in which a woman is forced to leave her village after it has been flooded with toxic water from the mines. The Shorts Competition also features Jafar Panahi’s Life; Tsai Ming-Liang’s The Night; In Flow of Wordsby Eliane Esther Bots; and Jay Rosenblatt’s How Do You Measure a Year?
The Israeli Competition was announced in April and can be found here.
As in previous years, the winners of the Israeli, International and Short Competitions at Docaviv will be eligible to compete for an Academy Award.
New Awards: Yad Vashem Award & Time Frame Award
For the first time this year, Docaviv and Yad Vashem will be presenting the Yad Vashem Award for an Outstanding Holocaust-related Documentary. A 3,000 USD prize will be presented to Bianca Stigter for her film Three Minutes: A Lengthening, produced by award-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen and Floor Onrust, with narration by Helena Bonham Carter.
Another new award this year is the Time Frame Award, granting an ILS 50,000 prize for a documentary inspired by the history of Israel and Israeli society. The new award is presented by the Kadar Art, Culture, and Science Foundation, founded by Dr. Avraham Kadar. The winner will be chosen from all Israeli films across all sections.
Spotlight on Ukraine
Docaviv 2022 spotlights Ukrain
e in a special program featuring films from and about Ukraine, including Oleksiy Radynski’s Infinity According to Florian, in which a Kyiv architectural landmark is threatened while its creator, 90-year-old Florian Yuriev, goes to war; Trenches by French filmmaker and military journalist Loup Bureau, who spent months in the trenches with Ukrainian soldiers as war loomed over them; and Simon Lereng Wilmont’s A House Made of Splintersabout a halfway house for kids whose families fell victim to the harsh reality of Ukraine.
Festival highlights
In the Depth of Field Competition, nine documentaries will compete for the Artistic Vision Award. Some of the films competing for the award are Robin Hunzinger’s Ultraviolette and the Blood-Spitters Gang and O, Collecting Eggs Despite the Times by Pim Zwier about German ornithologist Max Schönwetter; A Night of Knowing Nothing, winner of the L’Œil d’Or for Best Documentary in Cannes, by Payal Kapadia; and Alain Gomis’ Rewind and Play, an unconventional look behind the scenes of Thelonious Monk’s 1968 interview for a French television show.
The Beyond the Screen Competition, presented in memory of Docaviv founder Ilana Tsur, features films whose directors or subjects work to change our social, ecological, and political reality. Competing for the award, among others, are Vincent Kelner’s A Taste of Whale; Marc Wiese’s This Stolen Country of Mine; Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing’s Midwives; and Eat Your Catfish by Adam Isenberg, Noah Amir Arjomand and Senem Tüzen.
The Arts & Culture section will feature Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time by Robert B Weide and Don Argott; Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel by Amélie van Elmbt and Maya Duverdier about the legendary New York City hotel; Yaara Bou Melhem’s Unseen Skies about artist-activist Trevor Paglen; and Nina Menkes’ Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power about how Hollywood’s cinematic apparatus shaped the viewers’ mindset in many all-time favorite films.
Featured in this year’s Panorama section are Neasa Ní Chianáin and Declan McGrath’s Young Plato; Marie Amiguet and Vincent Munier’s The Velvet Queen with a soundtrack by Warren Ellis and Nick Cave; Los Zuluagas by Flavia Montini; and Terra Femme, a rare and beautiful collection of travelogues that tells the stories of the 20th century’s first female travelers, directed by Courtney Stephens. Stephens will attend the screening and add live narration to the film in an event organised in partnership with the Department of Screen-Based Arts at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.
In the festival’s Masters strand, Docaviv will feature films by renowned documentarians, such as Yuri Ancarani, who will attend the festival with his latest film Atlantide and hold a masterclass; Paweł Łoziński with his heartwarming festival hit The Balcony Movie; Ruth Beckermann with her Berlinale Documentary Award winner Mutzenbacher; and Brazilian filmmaker Karim Aïnouz with Mariner of the Mountains, in which he embarks on a lyrical and eye-opening journey of self-discovery to his father’s homeland, Algeria.
This year’s Music doc selection includes the Sinéad O’Connor doc Nothing Compares by Kathryn Ferguson; cinematographer Ed Lachman’s Songs for Drella (1990), a masterful digital restoration of Lou Reed and John Cale’s one-off intimate performance; The Computer Accent by Sebastian Pardo and Riel Roch-Decter about American dance pop trio YACHT; and Oeke Hoogendijk’s Licht: Stockhausen’s Legacy about radical German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.
