Issues of faith win over judges at Jerusalem Film Festival

As the annual Jerusalem Film Festival closed Monday night, it was Tikkun, a quiet, thoughtful film about a serious Haredi student and his questions of faith, that won the festival’s biggest feature film award.

Avishai Sivan’s Tikkun was awarded the Haggiag Family Award for Israeli Cinema for best feature. The film also won the Anat Pirchi Award for best script; the Haggiag Award for best actor — for lead Khalifa Natour — and the Van Leer Award for best cinematography.

Tikkun is about a young, religious man who goes through a near-death experience. Sivan’s first film, The Wanderer, was also about the ultra-Orthodox community.

The best documentary prize from the Van Leer Foundation went to Hotline, Silvina Landsmann’s heartfelt portrait of a Tel Aviv NGO trying to handle the never-ending tide of illegal refugees.