Movie reviews

WARSAW JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL / KAMERA DAWIDA ONLINE

זכות מלידה(BIRTH RIGHT)

Watchable. A pleasant short film with a realistic depiction of relationships among young people, holiday infatuations - smartly, swiftly and subtly presented from a few people's points of view. A desert in the background. A great music piece. And national identity dilemmas. No clear conclusion though.

THE REAL FAUDA

Watchable. I've never watched the original "Fauda" series but it's not an issue if you want to see the documentary about it. Created by two ex-special-forces soldiers, but with the other - Palestinian side in mind, it turns out to be a hit in Arab countries. While the on-screen actions are dramatised, the background of lives of both sides of the conflict is deemed realistic. Both languages are used and both subtitled too. It's comforting Israelis start to notice they've been the occupants of Arabs for 50 years and how they've been inducing fear, manifesting their presence with numerous checkpoints. While questioned about prospects for peace, they appear disillusioned though: in the past it would have been enough to change the leader, now they'd have to replace the whole nation, since the time of the second Intifada peace seems impossible. I guess the film will be interesting for the fans of the series but what I like about it the most, not watching "Fauda", is the real life reference regarding inter-nation relations and a chance to end this war. Sadly, that hasn't been explored further and the opinions on it are only Israeli.

I loved the online festival. The visual and audio quality was good, subtitles mostly on black backgrounds hence visible from a distance. Once I started a movie one night, stopped when I was afraid I might doze off and continued the next night. The documentaries and actors' movies, full length and short, covered a wide range of topics and were geographically diverse  which was brilliant. The only downside was that not all movies screened were listed on the official website, also each site which showed them had its own rules of how long they'd be available and whether you needed to collect an online ticket beforehand. Too much chaos with that. Even with the team answering questions on Facebook right away. Had there been uniform rules for each movie and complete information with links on one website, it would have been perfect.