The rapidly expanding Israeli film industry has had a big year already, with three Israeli feature films screened at Cannes in May. It makes its mark once again at our local Israeli Film Festival, presented by the Embassy of Israel, which is also one of the longest-running celebrations of national film in Singapore. Every film selected for the festival aims to reflect Israel’s multiculturalism. It opens with Ayelet Menahemi’s award-winning Hebrew-Mandarin production Noodle. The film tells the story of Miri, a twice-widowed El Al flight attendant who has to stay ‘grounded’ when her Chinese housekeeper is deported, forced to leave her passportless six-year-old son behind in Tel Aviv. Can Miri reunite mother and son? This dramedy won the Special Grand Prize of the Jury at the 2007 Montreal World Film Festival.

Another highlight is The Band’s Visit (see review), one of Israel’s highest-grossing films to date. It tells the story of an Egyptian band’s journey to Israel to play at the opening ceremony of an Arab cultural centre; as fate would have it, the band ends up stranded in the wrong city in the desert, strangers in a land where they don’t necessarily hit all the right notes.

Finally, in dramedy Free Zone, directed by Amos Gitaï, Hollywood princess Natalie Portman plays Rebecca, an American who breaks her engagement with her Israeli fiancé, hops in a cab and inadvertently joins taxi driver Hanna (Hana Laszlo) on a road trip to Jordan’s ‘free zone’.

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