In the 1950s and 60s, seven North African and Polish women were sent from their ship to the desert. Dimona Twist shares their life stories talking of the pains of immigration, poverty, the difficulties of adjusting to a new home, and their determined attempts to create rich and meaningful lives during their first 15 years in Dimona.
NIF Film Club discussed this film with NIF’s VP of Public Engagement Libby Lenkinski and director Michal Aviad.
Michal Aviad was born and raised in Jerusalem. Throughout the 1980’s, she lived in San Francisco, where she studied cinema and started making documentary films. Since returning to Israel in 1991, she has continued to write, direct, and produce both documentary and fiction films through the lens of women and gender. Aviad’s films were screened in festivals around the world such as Sundance, Telluride, Berlin International Film Festival, Hong Kong International, TIFF, Jerusalem Film Festival, and others. Her films have won numerous prizes including The Peace Prize at Berlinale (The Women Next Door, 1992), Best Israeli Film at Haifa International Film Festival (Invisible, 2011) and Best Documentary at Jerusalem Film Festival (Dimona Twist, 2016). Aviad is a senior faculty member at Tel Aviv University’s Tisch School of Cinema. In January 2020, she was awarded the prestigious Landau Prize for Arts and Sciences.