One of the dramatic signs of the women’s revolution in Israeli cinema actually appears in a movie made by a man, “The Kindergarten Teacher” by Nadav Lapid, which has received critical acclaim around the world and has been praised as one of the best Israeli movies of 2014. Suddenly male directors, too, are creating complex and complicated women as central characters. But, in fact, 2014 was an amazing year for female creators in Israeli cinema, and it would be unfair to attribute the change to a man.
“2014 was an excellent and unprecedented year,” Avner Shavit, the Israeli Walla website’s movie critic, says. “Compared to other countries, the Israeli industry provides more room for expression of women’s voices. In the Oscars there wasn’t a single woman nominee for best director. In France, one woman out of seven directors are competing in the [Cesar award] best director category, and in Israel [Ofir award] two women are competing for best film. This is especially amazing when one recalls that until 1980 there wasn’t here even a single full-length film by a woman.”
