Israeli films honored in Berlin

Three Israeli entries were honored at the International Berlinale Film Festival. Joseph Cedar took the prestigious competition’s Silver Bear for Best Director on Saturday night for his Lebanon war drama “Beaufort.” Cedar, 39, is a U.S.-born Orthodox Jew who spent much of his mandatory Israeli military service in southern Lebanon. “Hopefully this film will give insight into the specific nature of how absurd combat and war is,” he said in his acceptance speech. Also honored in Berlin was “The Bubble,” a portrait of bohemian Tel Aviv life including affair between a Jewish man and his Palestinian lover by Eytan Fox, which received the International Confederation of Art House Cinemas prize, and second place in the Panorama Prize catagory for best independent and art-house cinema. “Sweet Mud”, Dror Shaul’s family drama set in a kibbutz in the 1970s, received the Crystal Bear for Best Feature Film in the youth category. The youth jury said the film, an “authentic depiction of a close mother-son-relationship and the quest for a way of onés own, has moved us deeply.”