Event

LEVANTINE

1:00PM

LEVANTINE

Directed by Rafael Balulu
Produced by Yair Qedar
Israel, 2019, 50 min
Documentary
French, Hebrew, and English, with English subtitles
U.S. Première

Short Synopsis:
Award-winning Moroccan-Israeli filmmaker Rafael Balulu (A SONG OF LOVES, 2016) returns to the NYSJFF with LEVANTINE, a powerful portrait of Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff, an Egyptian-born writer, thinker, feminist, and pioneer of a Levantine Sephardi identity.

Director bio:
Rafael Balulu was born in 1981 in Afula, Israel, to a family who emigrated from Morocco. Balulu, a 2010 graduate from the Sam Spiegel Film School, Jerusalem, Israel, now teaches film at Tel Aviv. He participated in the Berlinale Talent Campus (2008, 2011, and 2012). He also participated in the Toronto International Film Festivals Talent Lab. Balulu has written and directed fifteen shorts, some of which won international prizes, including: SUCH EYES, which won the NYC Shorts Festival; BATMAN AT THE CHECKPOINT, which won the Berlin Today Award at the 62nd Berlinale; MY NAME IS SOLOMON HAGOS, which premiered at the 2013 TIFF; and CLOSE YOUR EYES, which premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival. SONG OF LOVES R. DAVID BUZAGLO a feature documentary premiered at DocAviv and at the NY Sephardic Jewish Film Festival. Balulus latest film is a documentary about Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff the great Egyptian-Jewish intellectual, novelist, essayist, and journalist.