The MGSDII is excited to announce that two award-winning filmmakers from Israel will be in San Diego for an Artist in Residence program. During the first three weeks in February 2020 they will screen their films in university classes. The filmmakers, Tal Inbar and Yotam Knispel, are this year’s winners of the Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival (the largest of its kind in the world)! In addition, the director of the film festival, Mya Kaplan, will join for a portion of their stay in February. Read more about the filmmakers below!

Also, at each event, the MGSDII will announce full scholarship opportunities to participate in the Jerusalem Film Workshop, a five-week summer program designed for talented, emerging filmmakers selected from all around the world. Last year two SDSU film students and one CSUSM film student won the prize.

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Tal Inbar is a 2018 graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School at Tel Aviv University. An aspiring director of the short documentary The Home Front, she is also a content editor for Reshet Media digital department. Her short film tells the true story of a police officer who invites a stranger in distress into his home. Eventually, he leaves him alone with his wife to deal with a terrorist event, not knowing the stranger is not who he says he is.

Yotam Knispel is a 2018 graduate of the Beit Berl College. He is a screenwriter, director and editor of numerous short films and music videos. He is currently working on his first feature length film. His short film, Girl With a Fork in a World of Soup, is a bitter-sweet musical comedy about a woman who has a lot of love to give, but no one to give it to. The sound of a guitar outside her window, coming from her neighbor, may lead to a shot at love.

Mya Kaplan is the Director of the Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival. The festival is the largest of its kind in the world and is considered one of the three most important in its field. Its activities are made possible thanks to dozens of volunteer students who curate the contents and produce the various events, and are motivated by their desire to promote student creativity and the short film format, in Israel and around the world. Each year the festival holds three major competitions; an international student film competition featuring films from 40 different countries, an Israeli student film competition in which approximately 10 film schools from around the country participate, and a competition for short independent films from Israel.