It's probably a stretch to say that Israeli cinema has come of age, but it is certainly maturing.
This year, for the first time in more than 20 years, an Israeli film, "Beaufort," was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. (It lost, but is still a well-done anti-war film.)
Another recent Israeli comedy, "The Band's Visit," has garnered positive critical reviews and audience support.
This week, Tel Aviv launched its tenth annual International Documentary Film Festival known as DocAviv.
The nine-day festival will feature more than 80 films that cover everything from Israel's 2006 war with Hezbollah, the plight of illegal Palestinian construction workers living in squalor in Tel Aviv, Bedouin wives, female suicide bombers, and the nature of obsession.
The quality of the small number of movies I've seen so far is pretty uneven. But there are a few standouts.
Last night, the festival kicked off with a special screening of "The Beetle," an inventive film about a father-to-be who sets off on an improbable journey to prove to his irritated and very pregnant wife that his irrational attachment to his disintegrating VW Beetle is not irrational at all.
To prove his point, director Yishai Orian tracks down all the previous owners of his VW and then, with his wife due to give birth within days, sets out for Jordan in hopes of finding a mechanic who will be willing to give his VW a quick, complete -- and cheap -- overhaul.
Along the way, Orian unearths a key to the VW hidden in the car's tail light by one of its owners, muses about the VW's Nazi origins, enlists a Jordanian camel to pull his broken-down Beetle into town and persuades a Jordanian shepherd in the desert to squeeze a few shots of fresh goat milk into his morning cereal.
The story is almost too good to be true. And Orian admits that some of the scenes -- such as the moment when he takes the car to the scrap yard and stops workers from demolishing his Beetle at the last minute -- were played out for dramatic effect.
"When you go on such a journey, the viewers need to feel the need to go on this journey with you," Orian said. "Cinematic scenes work on your feelings and your heart to make the journey work so that viewers will say: I will go also."
Orian wouldn't say if the scene with the camel pulling his VW was staged. "I'll leave that to the audience," he said, which one would assume is a polite way of saying yes.
I'm no cinematic expert, so I can't say if this type of fictional drama is typical in documentary films, but it certainly made the film entertaining. And there is plenty of poignant reality in the 70-minute film to make it worth watching.
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