A wide-ranging look at Israel through film

The 22nd annual Israel Film Festival officially opens Wednesday at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood with Shemi Zarhin’s “Aviva, My Love,” a drama about a hard-working mother who has a secret writing talent. But on Tuesday, the organizers will kick things off with a gala at the Beverly Hilton Hotel that honors “Borat” star Sacha Baron Cohen, Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chair Amy Pascal and Israeli actress Gila Almagor.

The festival, which continues through March 22, features more than 30 features, documentaries, TV dramas and series. The films will be screened at the Sunset 5 in Hollywood, the WGA Theater in Beverly Hills, Laemmle’s Town Center in Encino and Fallbook 7 in West Hills.

Festival founder and executive director Meir Fenigstein came up with the idea for the festival in the early 1980s while a student at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

“I wanted to do something good for Israel,” he says. “I am talking about 24 years ago, when there weren’t so many festivals around. I had six films in four days.”

Now the festival spans three cities -- Los Angeles, New York and Miami -- and two months.

“The last few years, Israeli films are really [having] a tremendous success worldwide,” he says, noting that the festival’s spotlight film is “Sweet Mud,” which won the world cinema jury prize for drama at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

The festival now receives about 100 submissions, mostly documentary. “The documentary industry is extremely strong in Israel,” Fenigstein says.

Among the documentary highlights, he says, are “Withdrawal From Gaza,” chronicling how 8,500 Jews were uprooted from their West Bank and Gaza Strip settlements in 2005 as part of the “disengagement” process to promote peace with the Palestinians, and “Storm of Emotions,” which examines the “disengagement” through the eyes of the Israeli police and army personnel.

The fiction films run the gamut, with comedies and thrillers, musicals and dramas. “These films can give American audiences an opportunity to see Israel from a different perspective,” Fenigstein says.

“What they see usually” on television, he says, is from the war that was fought with Hezbollah militia in Lebanon last summer. “There’s a kind of stigma in people’s minds of what Israelis are doing. The movies will change people’s minds about who Israelis are and their way of life.”

For more information: (877) 966-5566 or www.israelfilmfestival.com.

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-- Susan King