Israeli filmmakers have stellar year

2007 saw big box office, awards success

By YAIR RAVEH

The Israeli film industry is jubilant on the back of its first Oscar nomination in 23 years, with Joseph Cedar's "Beaufort" drawing a mention in the foreign-language film category.

Pic's success -- it was the top-grossing Israeli film of 2007 at the local box office -- caps a stellar year for the Israeli film industry, with films doing robust business at home and earning kudos from major international festivals and critics.

Now three of Israel's top directors are branching out to undertake international co-productions.

Cedar has been approached by German producer Rainer Grupe to direct a feature film about notorious German filmmaker Veit Harlan, who was considered the official film director of the Third Reich. He was later tried for crimes against humanity and acquitted -- and kept making movies until his death in 1965.

The film, Cedar says, is about Harlan and the production of his 1940 film "Jud Suss."

"Jud Suss" is considered to be one of the most atrocious, and most successful, anti-Semitic films produced in Nazi Germany, but it was directed by a filmmaker whose ex-wife was a Jew who later perished in Auschwitz.

Harlan is better known these days as the uncle of Christiane Kubrick, widow of the late Stanley Kubrick, and her brother Jan Harlan, who served as executive producer on a number of Kubrick films, including "Barry Lyndon" and "Eyes Wide Shut." Cedar has cited Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" as an inspiration for "Beaufort."

Eytan Fox, whose 2004's "Walk on Water" is Israel's biggest success at the U.S. box office to date, is also prepping a Holocaust-themed movie.

"Gad," set up by German shingle X Filme Intl., will be produced by Andro Stienborn. It is the true story of Gad Beck, who was hunted by the Nazis both as a Jew and a homosexual. He joined the Jewish resistance and helped save dozens of Jews from extermination.

Dover Koshashvili, whose 2001 mega-hit "Late Marriage" was in many ways the spearhead for this recent resurgence in Israeli cinema, has postponed production on his next Israeli film, "Infiltration," to take on helming duties on the U.K.-based production of "The Duel," a period film based on Anton Chekhov's novella of the same name.

The English-language movie was written by Mary Bing, and former Merchant/Ivory chief Donald Rosenfeld is producing. Lensing begins in May in Croatia, with "Infiltration," an adaptation of Yehoshua Kenaz's army-themed bestseller, due to begin shooting in Israel later in 2008.