Film Forum

Vanessa Lapa is an Israeli Academy-winning director and producer. She started as an accomplished journalist, who produced and directed over 100 news reports for Israeli TV. In 2006 she founded Realworks Ltd., an independent production company, specializing in documentary film. Her first TV documentary, OLMERT: CONCEALED DOCUMENTARY (2009), about Israel’s former Prime Minister was hailed as a uniquely insightful achievement in cinéma verité. Eight years in the making, the award-winning documentary THE DECENT ONE (2014) - a glimpse into the mind of SS chief Heinrich Himmler, based on his personal diaries - was officially selected for Panorama at the Berlinale. Vanessa returned to the Berlinale in 2020, officially selected for “Berlinale Specials”, with SPEER GOES TO HOLLYWOOD: a feature documentary about another Nazi official - Reichsminister Albert Speer, one of Hitler’s closest confidants - told in his own words. She was awarded “Best Director” from the Jerusalem Film Festival 2021. Moreover, the film won “Best Documentary” at the Israeli Academy Awards (“Ophir Awards”) that same year. Photo by Aline Frisch.

Tomer Eliav is an Israeli Academy Award-winning producer. Born and raised in Israel, he graduated as a sound engineer and worked as a sound designer and re-recording mixer in the Mixroom, the Dolby certified Mix stage in Israel for 25 years. Tomer designed and mixed over 100 features (an array of documentaries and short films), has mentored and lectured various cinema students and became a member of the Israeli Academy. He is the co-owner of Realworks Ltd., an independent production company and post production studio in Tel Aviv. Photo by Aline Frisch.

Roger Berkowitz is Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities and Professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Human Rights at Bard College. Professor Berkowitz authored The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition (Harvard, 2005; Fordham, 2010; Chinese Law Press, 2011). Berkowitz is editor of The Perils of Invention: Lying, Technology, and the Human Condition (forthcoming 2021) and co-editor of Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics (2009), The Intellectual Origins of the Global Financial Crisis (2012) and Artifacts of Thinking: Reading Hannah Arendt's Denktagebuch (2017). His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The American Interest, Bookforum, The Forward, The Paris Review Online, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and many other publications. He is a co-editor of Just Ideas, a book series published by Fordham University Press. He is the winner of the 2019 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought given by the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Bremen, Germany. Photo by Karl Rabe.

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