The Festival du cinéma français en Israël - 2013 will be held March 9 through 30.
This non-competitive festival is jointly organized by the Cultural Service of the French Embassy in Israel and the Eden Cinema company, with support from uniFrance Films, TV5 Monde, and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
It will be held at cinematheques in Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Sderot, and Roch Pina, and will present a broad panorama of the diversity, creativity, and dynamism of current French film production. The festival attracts 25,000 spectators each year at the various cinematheque screenings. Retrospectives and master classes are also held in the five cities hosting the event.
Around twenty French films are selected at the festival each year, with support from local distributors. This year, Pascal Bonitzer (Looking for Hortense), Idit Cebula (Where We Grew Up), Cédric Kahn (A Better Life), Philippe Le Guay (Cycling with Moliere), Lorraine Lévy (Le Fils de l'autre), Noémie Lvovsky (Camille Rewinds), and Elie Wajeman (Alyah) will be in attendance to present their films.
With attendance figures on the rise since 2009, French films crossed the million admissions mark in Israel in 2012. French cinema registered record attendance last year, largely attributed to the major hits The Artist (110,000 admissions), Taken 2 (255,000 admissions), and the mega-popular The Intouchables, which boasted the highest admissions figures ever registered by a French film in Israel (490,000 spectators). It is worth adding that What's in a Name? also stood out in 2012, garnering 60,000 admissions in this market.
France is the most active co-producer of Israeli films, with 30 co-productions completed between 2001 and 2009. Among the five documentaries nominated at the recent Oscars, two titles were Franco-Israeli co-productions: The Gatekeepers by Ror Moreh and Five Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi.
According to figures provided by the Israel Film Fund, the film import market is divided up between American films (68%), European films (23%), and others (9%).
