Vidor Donation Powers Second Screen for 15th Arava Film Festival

Producer Eyal Shiray is bringing a second outdoor screen to the Central Arava for the 15th edition of the Arava International Film Festival. The event, scheduled from November 4 to 14, will be the first time the festival utilizes two simultaneous venues. A donation from the Vidor family provided the funding required for this expansion, allowing the program to accommodate a wider range of content in the desert setting near Tzukim.

Shiray established the festival in 2012 in partnership with the Central Arava Regional Council. The expanded capacity this year supports a lineup that includes nine Israeli premieres, works by internationally recognized directors, and a dedicated tribute to director Billy Wilder. The festival will take place in a location overlooking the Arava mountains.

The opening evening on November 4 will focus on films supported by the Negev Film Fund that were shot in the Israeli desert. One of the featured titles is Ruthy Pribar’s What is to Come. The film stars Ronit Yudkevitch as a woman starting over after 40 years of marriage. Ya’akov Zada Daniel, who is known for his role in Fauda, plays her boss and a potential romantic interest.

Reed Van Dyk’s Atonement will screen on November 5 and 12. The film, which marks Van Dyk’s feature directing debut, explores the aftermath of the Iraq War through the perspectives of a former US Marine and an Iraqi family. Based on a true story reported by Dexter Filkins in The New Yorker in 2012, the plot centers on a 2003 incident in Baghdad where American troops killed three men from an Iraqi Armenian-Christian family. The film premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight program at Cannes.

Boyd Holbrook stars as Lou D’Alessandro, the Marine seeking forgiveness from the surviving family members nearly a decade after the incident. Hiam Abbass portrays Mariam Khachaturian, the family matriarch who has moved to California but continues to deal with the event. Kenneth Branagh plays Michael Reid, a journalist who helps arrange the meeting between the two sides.

Georgian filmmaker Levan Koguashvili is expected to attend screenings of his comedy-drama Guria with members of the cast and crew. The film is set in a western Georgian village in the early 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It follows an indebted farmer and a friend attempting to find the farmer a new romantic partner, with traditional Georgian polyphonic singing featured prominently.

The schedule also includes Florian Zeller’s psychological thriller Bunker, starring Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, and Paul Dano. Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky covers the making of the boxing film that made Sylvester Stallone a star. 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 this year, deals with grief. New works by Nanni Moretti, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Andrey Zvyagintsev, Cristian Mungiu, and Pawel Pawlikowski are also included. A retrospective honoring festival adviser Edna Fainaru will screen four Billy Wilder films: Double Indemnity, Sabrina, Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment.