Jerusalem Film Festival 2013

I've always been a big fan of the Jerusalem Film Festival - It's one of the best chances we have in Israel to feel like Hollywood. The films are mostly beautiful and thought-worthy, but sometimes they're pure junk, like I've witnessed first hand a couple of years ago with the disgusting and otiose "Balada Triste" that actually gave me nightmares...
This year I went to see the premiere of the Israeli "Hunting Elephants", which also opened the festival, and although I'm not a big fan of Israeli cinema - I quite enjoyed it. Even my mother (who was my date) did. The only thing I have to warn you before going - remember that it's one perspective of human and male-female relations. The director doesn't know how to build, or doesn't want or isn't interested in powerful women characters, and never has been, and that's why the character of the mother annoyed me so much. The men are sexist and racist, and a bit one-dimensional, but the mother was a complete caricature of 50's women.
So when you go watch the movie, remember between the laughs that it's only a story, it's only the vision of the director, and the things are portrayed in a certain way to build the character of the child as an orphan, to help him mature and become a man by losing his father and basically his mother as well. Too bad that the director and writer couldn't find another way to make him lose his mother than to make her a sad character who sleeps for money with her disgusting boss because "she doesn't have a choice". It seemed at times that she's using her child to extract money, and definitely using herself to do so. And that's not the right message for a family movie in 2013.
But, to sum it up - it was a great experience, as always, to see the Israeli crowd coming to Jerusalem from all around the country to support the festival, and to feel a bit like abroad. Too bad that the film that was chosen to open the festival was chosen because of its commercial potential and not for its quality or message. Till next year.