Vidor Family Gift Brings Second Screen to 15th Arava Film Festival

The Arava International Film Festival begins November 4 in the Central Arava, marking its 15th edition. For the first time, the event will use two outdoor screens located near Tzukim. The expansion allows the program to include nine Israeli premieres, international titles, and classic cinema screenings.

Producer Eyal Shiray founded the festival in 2012 with the Central Arava Regional Council. A recent donation from the Vidor family provided the capital necessary to install the second screening venue. This addition increases the number of films the festival can present during its ten-day run, which ends on November 14.

The opening night on November 4 focuses on films supported by the Negev Film Fund. Ruthy Pribar's What is to Come premieres as part of this slate. The film stars Ronit Yudkevitch as a woman starting over after 40 years of marriage. Ya'akov Zada Daniel, an actor known for his role in Fauda, plays her boss and a potential romantic interest.

Reed Van Dyk's Atonement is scheduled for November 5 and November 12. The film explores the aftermath of the Iraq War through the perspectives of a former US Marine and an Iraqi family. It is based on a 2012 article by Dexter Filkins in The New Yorker. The story centers on a 2003 incident in Baghdad where American troops killed three members of an Iraqi Armenian-Christian family. Van Dyk, whose short film DeKalb Elementary received an Academy Award nomination, makes his feature directing debut with this project.

Boyd Holbrook plays Lou D'Alessandro, the Marine seeking forgiveness from the surviving relatives. Hiam Abbass portrays Mariam Khachaturian, the family matriarch who has settled in California. Kenneth Branagh plays Michael Reid, a journalist who helps arrange the meeting between the two parties. The film previously premiered in the Directors' Fortnight section at the Cannes Film Festival.

Georgian filmmaker Levan Koguashvili is expected to attend screenings of Guria with members of its cast and crew. The comedy-drama is set in a western Georgian village in the early 1990s, shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed. It follows an indebted farmer and a friend attempting to find him a new romantic partner, with traditional Georgian polyphonic singing serving as a key element of the narrative.

The schedule also includes Florian Zeller's psychological thriller Bunker, which stars Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, and Paul Dano. Peter Farrelly's I Play Rocky details the production of the boxing film that launched Sylvester Stallone's career. Cédric Kahn's A Place to Heal follows two teenage girls in psychiatric treatment, while Sandra Wollner's Everytime, which won the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes, deals with grief. New works from Nanni Moretti, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Andrey Zvyagintsev, Cristian Mungiu, and Pawel Pawlikowski round out the contemporary selections. A retrospective honoring late festival adviser Edna Fainaru will screen four Billy Wilder films: Double Indemnity, Sabrina, Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment.