This screening is part of the 46th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Encore Series at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, November 14–15. Click here to purchase a series pass.
Oxygen, winner of the 2025 Jerusalem Film Festival Best Israeli Feature Award, is a beautiful, accomplished feature that boldly explores maternal love and obsession in a country where every knock on the door can portend bad news about the death of a child. Anat (Dana Ivgy, whose break out role was in Keren Yedaya’s 2004 Cannes winner Or), is a school teacher, lapsed poet, and mother caught in the sandwich generation of Israel: her young son Ido (Ben Sultan) is serving in the army and her father Yaki (Marek Rozenbaum) is an elderly war hero experiencing PTSD.
When war erupts in the north, Anat’s angst and the film’s tension rise as she tries to prevent her son from participating. When she learns he has volunteered for a tour of duty in Lebanon, her love and fear push her to contemplate radical choices. Netalie Braun’s elegant drama, stunningly shot by Itay Marom, has a subtle, lyrical soundtrack and features powerful performances from an ensemble cast at the top of their game. — Nancy Fishman
Netalie Braun is a director, screenwriter, and producer working across fiction and documentary film. Her feature Oxygen (2025) won Best Film at the Jerusalem Film Festival, and her documentary Shooting (2025) premiered at Telluride and received the Jury Award at DocAviv. Her films have screened at major international festivals including the Berlinale and IDFA. She heads the MFA Program at the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University.
Programmer's Note: We selected Oxygen for the SFJFF46 Encore series after two sold-out Festival screenings and the film’s recognition from the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle’s Best Narrative Feature Award. We're proud to bring this powerful film back to Bay Area audiences to celebrate director Netalie Braun's brave filmmaking, which explores the unique love of a mother for her child, and the lengths of her protection - culminating in a crucial exploration of a society which demands mandatory military service of young adults.