Haifa Film Festival Opens With Avi Nesher's 'Our Loves' and Global Auteurs

The 42nd Haifa International Film Festival is opening its doors with a striking flashback to 2023. The festival's opening film, set to premiere on Saturday night marking the conclusion of the Sukkot holiday, is "Our Loves", the new film by 74-year-old director Avi Nesher. The movie follows a gallery of characters who believe that October 6 is the worst day of their lives, only to awaken to the fateful events of October 7, 2023. At the same ceremony, Nesher will be honored with a lifetime achievement award.

A Star-Studded International Lineup

Looking ahead, 2026 is shaping up to be an extraordinary year for auteur directors, and several major names grace the festival's program. Among them are Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan's Oscar representative despite his film being set in France, and his fellow Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda. The lineup also features France's François Ozon and Olivier Assayas—who directed a film about Vladimir Putin—alongside Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, currently representing France for the Oscars, British director Danny Boyle, Italy's Nanni Moretti, who directed a film based on Eshkol Nevo, and Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, currently working in France.

This is an exceptionally impressive list of name-dropping for festival premieres. To this already dazzling roster, one can add the Spanish directors Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, winners of the directing award this year at Cannes, whose film "Black Ball" was already screened at the Jerusalem Film Festival and revealed to be an absolute masterpiece. That film alone makes the trip to Haifa worthwhile.

Festival Highlights and Recommendations

Putting the big names aside, here are a few films from the festival program that we have already managed to see, along with some recommendations, warnings, and disappointments.

"The Sky" is a strange, wild, and unusual film. Alberto Schammah, who will be a guest at the festival, is a Spanish director living in England who chose to shoot his film in Bolivia. It is a kind of psychedelic religious fairy tale, boasting mesmerizing colors, about an eight-year-old girl who, in the opening scene, swallows a fish, in the second scene murders her father, and in the third scene kills her mother and packs her into a barrel full of salt. She then embarks on a journey in a truck given to her by a priest, with the ultimate mission of bringing her mother to paradise—the sky.

"The Moon Is My Father" marks the return of Georgian director George Ovashvili to Israel as a festival guest with his new film, which explores themes of family and home. Nino is a 12-year-old boy, full of rage and violence, who gets into fights with everyone at school. Living with his grandmother, who has grown quite weary of him and his behavior, he is actually somewhat pleased when his father is released from prison and arrives to take in the son he hasn't seen in ten years. In a remote village and an isolated house, the father and son set out to hunt deer together and learn to know one another. The film demands a degree of patience, but Ovashvili continues to prove himself as a director who creates beautiful connections between family and nature. Israeli composer Yossi Brantwein contributes the soundtrack.

"The Wedding" arrives in Haifa straight from its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Here, too, we find plenty of ethnographic folklore and a poignant look at family and nature, telling the story of a family that moves into a house previously owned by another family, guaranteeing themselves a life of bad luck. The film follows the children during their youth and catches up with them years later when they reunite at their sister's wedding. The location, nestled at the foot of the Antalya mountains, is undeniably striking.

"Everybody Loves Bill Evans" is the narrative feature debut of documentary filmmaker Grant Gee, who previously directed a film about Radiohead. Beautifully shot in black and white, it tells the story of the legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans, who played alongside Miles Davis. Gee focuses on the period when Evans spiraled into a vortex of drugs and alcohol, resulting in a jazz film that actually features very little jazz.

"The Stranger" is another period piece shot in black and white. François Ozon once again demonstrates what a stylish and polished director he is in this adaptation of Albert Camus's novel. Ozon closes his film with the song "Killing an Arab" by The Cure, thereby revealing that, like most of his generation, he was first introduced to Camus's story through the song. In other words, Ozon is executing an adaptation of a song that is itself an adaptation of a book. The protagonist is an indifferent man, almost devoid of emotion, living in Algiers during the French colonial occupation. He receives news of his mother's death, travels to the funeral, goes swimming, makes love, and goes to the movies. Everything he does during these days will be turned into incriminating evidence when the day comes for him to stand trial before the court. Ozon slightly trivializes Camus's novel, transforming it into a handsome visual presentation.

"Coward" is the third film by Belgian director Lukas Dhont, whose previous works include "Girl" and "Close". Serving as Belgium's submission to the Oscars, the film pleasantly surprised me. It begins in a somewhat predictable and mannered fashion, focusing on a gentle soldier who is drafted into the Belgian army during World War I. When he encounters a group of wounded soldiers who have been exempted from the front lines and tasked with putting on an entertainment show for the troops and officers, he intentionally injures himself to join them, primarily to remain close to the soldier in charge of directing and choreography. The two soon realize that, ironically and tragically, this horrific war is the only place where they can truly be together. "Coward" surprises by being Dhont's most romantic film yet, growing increasingly beautiful and sweeping as it unfolds.