This year’s festival, which is usually held in February, will take place online this year March 1-5. In addition, an in-person festival is planned for June 9-20.
The Berlinale has been welcoming to Israeli cinema for decades and in 2019, Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms won the Golden Bear, the festival’s top prize in the main competition. This year, Lapid will be on the jury for the Competition section and his fellow judges are also directors whose films have won the prize in recent years.
All Eyes Off Me by Hadas Ben Aroya will be shown in the Panorama section. The movie consists of three episodes, all of which are about people testing and breaking boundaries. The first is about a young woman looking for the guy who got her pregnant at a wild party. In the second, a young couple tries to fulfill a sexual fantasy that gets out of hand, while in the third an older man awakens to find his young female dog walker in bed beside him.
Ben Aroya said, “The festival’s decision to physically take place in the summer fills me with hope. I love cinema in its romantic configuration: big screen, darkness, intimacy shared by absolute strangers. I am full of longing for what has already seemed so far away, and in fact is at the heart of the film: the gap between being able to open up and approach uninhibited strangers in the face of the emotional disconnect people in my generation experience. This gap fascinates and frightens me, and especially in the days of social distance it takes on additional meanings.”
The film is the second feature by Ben Aroya, who also made People Who Are Not Me in 2016.
Israeli films have won prizes in the Panorama section a number of times and Udi Aloni’s Junction 48 won the Audience Award in 2016.
Avi Mograbi’s documentary, The First 54 Years, will take part in the Forum section.