Arava

Program:

International Competition

Year:

2023

Country:

Israel

Genre:

Fiction

Duration:

27ʼ

Arava, an introverted yet fierce teenage girl, returns home after spending six months in a secluded rehab facility. She immediately reunites with her old-time troublemaker friend, Tzipi. Despite Arava’s will to keep out of trouble, Tzipi convinces her to embark on a spontaneous trip to a Northern Jewish sanctum in pursuit of a mystical tradition of redemption. The two runaways hitchhike through small-town Israel as they encounter characters and situations that hold a mirror to their lives, their inner conflicts, and their ambivalent relationship with one another. Arava is a story of friendship and unquenched passion between two young girls in an unsafe world, but beyond that, it is a portrait of the complexity, magic, pain and hope in the realities of at-risk youth in Israel.

Vote:

Schedule

Sarah Meital Benjamin

Sarah Meital Benjamin was born in Israel to a Mizrahi-Ashkenazi family from a Hasidic community that she subsequently left at a young age. Throughout her teens, she spent her time documenting her unique world, capturing the punk scene of ex-religious youth in Jerusalem, her hometown. Her images have since been published in international platforms such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal Magazine, Dazed Magazine, and more. At the age of eighteen, Sarah moved to New York City where she continued her documentary style work, capturing portraits of NYC’s eclectic youth scene. These images formed a “street casting” database. Subsequently, this gave the start of an international career as a casting director. After living in New York for the past ten years, Sarah returned to her hometown of Jerusalem to create ARAVA, a deeply personal story based on true events. Sarah is currently working on her first feature film, also to be set in Jerusalem.

Filmography: Arava (2023)

Creative team

Director

Sarah Meital Benjamin

Screenplay

Sarah Meital Benjamin, Batèl Zaharaa Mann

Camera

Keren Bergman

Editing

Maya Klar

Producer

Michael Uchenik