Paris Israeli Film Festival 2026 – Full Programme

PARIS ISRAELI FILM FESTIVAL 2026 – FULL PROGRAMME

From March 16 to 24, 2026, the Majestic Passy cinema (Paris 16th) hosts the 26th Paris Israeli Film Festival. A week of films screened with French subtitles, filmmaker Q&As, and a chance to discover a living, plural cinema shaped by the realities of its time.

Radu Mihăileanu, patron of the 26th edition

The choice of a patron speaks volumes. This year it is Radu Mihăileanu — and the symbolism runs deep. Born in Bucharest in 1958, son of a dissident Jewish journalist, he fled Ceaușescu’s Romania in 1980, stopped in Israel, then settled in France where he studied film at the IDHEC (forerunner of La Fémis).

His films are long meditations on exile, memory and identity: Train of Life (1998), a tragicomic fable about the Holocaust celebrated at Venice and Sundance; Live and Become (2005), which won France’s César for Best Original Screenplay and told the little-known story of Operation Moses and Ethiopian Jews; The Concert (2009), which drew nearly two million French viewers. A Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, Mihăileanu embodies what this festival has always stood for: humanist cinema that crosses borders without erasing them.

The Programme

The 2026 selection spans feature films, documentaries, short films in competition, and three special sections — Horizons, Jewish Experience and Art & Cinema — plus a classic. All films are screened in their original language with French subtitles.

🎬 Feature Films

A Burning Man by Eyal Halfon (1h43) opens the festival on Monday, March 16 — with the director in attendance. A father drives his son to a military base and cannot bring himself to leave. War as an interior state; waiting as a form of resistance.

Dead Language by Moshe Brezis and Ofir Binnun (1h50): at the airport, a woman waits for her husband but greets a stranger by mistake. The encounter reveals the emptiness she has been living with. Screened with actress Sarah Adler and film historian Ophir Levy.

Hola! Chau… by Jorge Weller (1h35): an Argentine-Israeli musician’s already crowded home is thrown into chaos when his father and sister show up after ten years of absence. Comedy and drama collide in this portrait of families reshaped by exile.

Oxygen by Netalie Braun (1h35): a single mother waits for her son’s military service to end. A new war breaks out. The film captures, with quiet intensity, what waiting costs those who stay behind.

Book of Ruth by Esty Bitton Shushan (1h28): a young ultra-Orthodox couple shaken by tragedy. A film about doubt, silence and faith put to the test.

Bella by Jamal Khalaily and Zohar Shachar (1h15) closes the festival on Tuesday, March 24: an unexpected inheritance — a prized curly pigeon — sparks an absurd road trip across Israel and Palestine. Closing film, presented with actor Elisha Banai.

Also screening: Cabaret Total by Roy Assaf · Real Estate by Anat Malz · Saving Shuli San by Ben Bachar (a wildly funny adventure in Japan).

🎥 Documentaries

1341 Frames of Love and War by Ran Tal (1h30): eighteen months in the archive of Micha Bar-Am, Israel’s most celebrated war photographer, born in Berlin in 1930. An exploration of photography, memory and the cost of dedicating a life to documenting conflict. With critic Ariel Schweitzer (Cahiers du cinéma).

Hora by Avi Weissblei (1h00): one hundred years after the hora’s birth as Israel’s emblematic folk dance, the film traces its history through the voices of those who shaped it. With Ilan Zaoui, founder of the Adama dance company.

Kichka: Telling Myself by Gad Aisen (1h10): a portrait of Franco-Belgian cartoonist Michel Kichka, son of a Holocaust survivor, exploring how art becomes memory, transmission and reconstruction.

Proud Jewish Boy by Isri Halpern (1h27): in 1938, seventeen-year-old Herschel Grynszpan shot a Nazi diplomat in Paris — an act immediately exploited by Goebbels to justify Kristallnacht. Previously unseen archives shed new light on his motives. With historian Georges Bensoussan.

Unraveling UNRWA by Duki Dror (1h15): since October 7, UNRWA has been at the heart of a global controversy. The film traces seventy-five years of the agency’s history and asks hard questions about its role and its drift. Screened in partnership with Actions Avocats.

✦ Special Sections

Horizons: Mama by Or Sinai (1h33), about a woman returning to Poland after years away; Nandauri by Eti Tsicko (1h33), an Israeli lawyer of Georgian origin travels to a mountain village to retrieve an abandoned child — and rediscovers her own roots.

Jewish Experience: The Chouchani Enigma by Michael Grynszpan (1h27) — ten years of investigation into the mysterious M. Shoshani, a wandering genius who profoundly influenced Elie Wiesel and Emmanuel Levinas. Screened with the director and Samuel Blumenfeld (Le Monde). A must-see — and a must-listen: the Falafel Cinéma podcast has a full episode with Grynszpan.

Art & Cinema: Heartbreak by Jessica Vaturi-Dembo (1h30) — born of the shock of October 7, a silent black-and-white film where body language replaces speech, drawing on mime and burlesque to transform collective grief into a poetic language of resistance.

🎞️ Classic

The Pill by David Perlov (1972, 1h30): the first fiction feature by one of Israel’s greatest filmmakers — a burlesque satire on youth and the fantasy of eternal life. Introduced by director Nadav Lapid, with Yael Perlov (David’s daughter, editor and producer).

🎬 Short Films in Competition

Nine films compete for the jury prize: Bush (Elik Fromchenko) · Falling Up (Amit Lellouche) · Frequency (Mindi Ehrlich) · Half a Date (Eden Abitbol) · Last Respects (Asaf Ofir) · NotMyWeekend (Rona Segal) · Shivtown (Hillel Ben Zeev Perlov) · Something Blue (Shani Bergman) · The Wall (Dovi Rozenberg). The winning film will be screened at the closing ceremony.

Falafel Cinéma at the festival

Three recent episodes of the Falafel Cinéma podcast connect directly with the 2026 programme:

▶ Festival du Cinéma Israélien de Paris and interview of Armelle Bayou 

▶ Michael Grynszpan — The Chouchani Enigma: the director behind the Jewish Experience documentary speaks about his decade-long investigation. Pair it with the screening on Thursday, March 19 at 17:15, Majestic Passy.

▶ Hillel Ben Zeev Perlov — Shivtown: the filmmaker behind the competition short — and grandson of David Perlov, whose 1972 classic The Pill is also on the programme.

Practical Information