KATHMANDU: “There are predominantly two types of movies, ones with profit in mind and ones with cultural and religious practices in mind.” It is the latter, says Krishna Malla, the CEO of Nepal Film Society, which works to bring people across borders together. Isreali movies—drama, animations, documentary and thrillers—in recent days have garnered international recognition. 

The Embassy of Israel in collaboration with Nepal Film Society (NFS) organized the 11th Israeli Film Festival at the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB), Exhibition Road on Tuesday. The festival in Kathmandu  began on Wednesday and continues till Friday at NTB. The festival will travel to Pokhara from June 28 till June 30, 2017; and will further move to Biratnagar from July 6 to 8, 2017. In 2017, the Government of Israel celebrates the ‘50 years of reunification of Jerusalem’ and hence the movies are dedicated to the country’s capital. 

The Film Festival on Tuesday was inaugurated by The Right Honorable Onsari Gharti Magar, Speaker of the Legislature Parliament of Nepal, who hoped the festival will make draw Nepali together in appreciating Jewish traditional practices. 

At the opening event, a movie by the name ‘Apple from the Desert’ was displayed. The movie served to showcase few boundaries imposed on women through the means of cultural in Jerusalem. The nature of these practices rang a few bells for a few Nepali audiences as well, who observed a general tendency among parents to marry their girls off at young age. Similarly, the movie featured a protagonist who went out of bounds to make something out of her life, instead of submitting to her father’s illogical wishes. For a Nepali audience, the girl’s spirit was empowering because she taught the audience how ‘sky doesn’t fall’ if she went against few illogical traditional practices.  This movie, fulfilling the vision of Israeli Film Festival 2017, served as a bridge and a medium to bring Nepali film enthusiasts to appreciate cultural similarities of the two countries.