The Cinema Project, which is part of the Yehoshua Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts, is having a banner year.

Of the six Israeli films shown in Cannes this year, the Cinema Project backed four: The Go-Go Boys, The Kindergarten Teacher, Next To Her [pictured] and That Lovely Girl. With an annual budget of $7.8m (ils27m), $5.8m (ils20m) of which is invested in features, it has a wider mandate than Israel Film Fund and also supports shorts, documentaries and TV dramas.

“We are looking for quality that will appeal both to Israeli and international audiences,” says Giora Einy, head of the Cinema Project. “We offer up to $580,000 (ils2m) for features with a budget of more than $875,000 (ils3m). Our main purpose is to come up with the best possible product that will have a better chance of prevailing in the international market.”

The Cinema Project¹s most recent credits include Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s Big Bad Wolves, Amos Gitai’s Ana Arabia, and Dror Moreh’s Oscar-nominated feature documentary The Gatekeepers. It has also backed André Singer’s documentary Night Will Fall, about the discovery of post-Second World War footage about the concentration camps, worked on by Alfred Hitchcock.

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