Tradition clashes with modernity in Bazi Gete’s RED LEAVES. Winner of the Jerusalem Film Festival’s award for BEST DEBUT FILM, the story follows Meseganio Tadela, an Ethiopian émigré to Israel and patriarch of his family. Meseganio grew up in a world a universe away, one that clung to Jewish traditions over 2,000 years old. Now with his children growing up in a secular society and a modern world that he doesn’t understand, Meseganio is adrift. The promise of the “Promised Land” is out of reach.

The story told has echoes in other societies where traditional worlds have begun to crumble. But the story is also particular to Israel, a country that has tried to make the promise a reality but has yet to fully do so.