Desert film festival expands to two screens with new war drama

The Arava International Film Festival will open its 15th edition on November 4 near Tzukim in the Central Arava. The event runs through November 14 and marks the first year the festival operates two outdoor screening venues. A donation from the Vidor family funded the addition of the second screen, allowing organizers to expand the program beyond the previous single-site format.

The expanded schedule includes nine Israeli premieres and a tribute to the late filmmaker Billy Wilder. The opening evening focuses on productions supported by the Negev Film Fund and filmed in the desert. One such film is Ruthy Pribar’s What is to Come, which stars Ronit Yudkevitch and Ya’akov Zada Daniel. The narrative follows a woman navigating life after forty years of marriage.

A centerpiece of the international lineup is Atonement, the feature directing debut of Reed Van Dyk. Van Dyk, whose short film DeKalb Elementary received an Academy Award nomination, adapts a 2012 New Yorker article by Dexter Filkins. The story centers on a US Marine who returns home haunted by his role in a 2003 incident in Baghdad where American troops killed three members of an Iraqi Armenian-Christian family.

The film stars Boyd Holbrook as the Marine, who seeks forgiveness from the surviving family members nearly a decade after the event. Hiam Abbass, known for her role in Succession, portrays the family matriarch, while Kenneth Branagh plays the journalist who facilitates their meeting. The drama premiered at the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight and will be screened on November 5 and 12.

Georgian director Levan Koguashvili is expected to attend with cast and crew to present Guria. Set in western Georgia in the early 1990s, the comedy-drama depicts rural life and economic hardship following the Soviet collapse. The festival also features Bunker, a psychological thriller directed by Florian Zeller and starring Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, and Paul Dano. Zeller won an Oscar for The Father.

Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky examines the production of the classic boxing film that launched Sylvester Stallone’s career. The program also includes works from Nanni Moretti, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Andrey Zvyagintsev, Cristian Mungiu, and Pawel Pawlikowski. A retrospective honoring festival adviser Edna Fainaru will show four Billy Wilder classics: Double Indemnity, Sabrina, Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment.