HaSusita Shel Herzl

While helping his war-weary students find their own voices, a high school teacher attempts to start a new life in an Israeli town perpetually in danger, in the teen drama Shooting Life. Yigal (Mickey Leon), a middle-aged divorcé and unemployed film director from Tel Aviv, accepts a position teaching filmmaking in Sderot, near the Gaza border where air raid sirens and missile attacks are ubiquitous. Though they're slow to warm to him, he gains his 12th-grade students' trust by coaxing them to film their own stories of love and loss. With their cameras on themselves, they connect with family members, discovering secrets about their lives. But Yigal's fervent commitment to honest self-expression leads some kids into conflict with their parents, and puts him at odds with his school principal. Bolstered by a strong ensemble cast of up-and-coming young actors, this engrossing coming-of-age story ponders, from the next generation's viewpoint, the shattered dreams and future hopes of the Middle East. (Atlanta Jewish Film Festival)