Other festival prize winners include Self Made, Red Leaves and The Decent One.

Gett, the Trial of Vivian Amsalem, by Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz [pictured], the third part of a trilogy about the painfully, never ending process of an Israeli-style divorce; and Princess, the debut picture of Tali Shalom-Ezer about a girl’s troubled rites of passage in a complicated household, shared the Haggiag Award for Best Israeli Feature at this year’s Jerusalem Film Festival.

Gett, which was first unveiled earlier in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, also won the festival’s new audience award.

Gett’s Menashe Noy collected the best actor award while young Shira Hass was crowned best actress for her performance in Princess. Princess was also recognized for best cinematography (Radek Ladzuk) and best music (Ishai Adar). Additional awards went to Self Made (best Script to Shira Geffen, best editing to Nilli Feller), with Bazi Gete’s Red Leaves picked as best first film.

Vanessa Lapa’s documentaryThe Decent One, which attempts to explore the mind, ideals ands plans of the infamous Heinrich Himmler through all the papers and diaries found at the end of WW2 in his family’s residence, walked away with Van Leer Award for Best Israeli Documentary.

An additional award went to Robby Elmaliah for The Unwelcoming.

In more awards, the In the Spirit of Freedom programme winners were for best documentary Watchers of the Sky by Edet Betzberg, about doing justice to the victims of genocides, wherever they may take place; and Abdrahmanne Sissako’s Timbuktu as best fiction.

Alexander Arcady’s 24 Days and Radical Evil by Stefan Ruzowitzky won in the Jewish Experience section.

Finally, the International Critics Jury singled out two first films, Gueros by Alonso Ruizpalacios and Bazi Gete’s Red Leaves. For best Israeli feature film, they selected Nadav Lapid’s The Kindergarten Teacher.

Even with troubled times in Israel, the festival said it saw over 60,000 admissions to the 200-odd films that were screened from July 10-20. Though some of the guests cancelled their trips due to the unrest, others, such as David Mamet, Marin Karmitz, Spike Jonze, Park Chan Wook and Martina Gedeck were in attendance.


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