Winner of Best Israeli Feature at the Haifa International Film Festival, A Burning Man follows a father who brings his soldier son to a remote military base. After their farewell, the father is suddenly overwhelmed with fear for his son and decides to stay near the base, as if his presence could somehow protect him. While waiting beneath an acacia tree just outside the base, his life comes to a halt. There, he is forced to confront long-delayed decisions and encounters unexpected visitors who offer him moments of comfort and understanding.

Anchored by Shai Avivi’s beautifully restrained, deeply affecting performance, the film captures the universal ache of waiting, worrying, and loving a child you cannot shield from the world. A visually stunning journey in which silence carries extraordinary weight, it has been praised for portraying “the reality of parental dread through an unexpected lens.”

Chandler: preceded by the short film The Wall

Generations of IDF soldiers have had to jump over “the wall” to pass combat training, but some just cannot do it, no matter how many times they try.