"Aya," an short film by the Israeli directors Mihal Brezis and Oded Binnun, will compete in the "Short Film (Live Action)" category during the 2015 Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Thursday. Brezis and Binnun, graduates of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem wrote the script in collaboration with Israeli director Tom Shoval, another alumnus of the school. Hillel Roseman, one of the film's producers, also graduated from the school. On Tuesday, the Berlin International Film Festival announced that Israeli director Nadav Lapid's "Lama-" ("Why-") will compete in the short film category against 26 other productions. The movie was also produced under the auspices of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School. The festival will also run a separate, non-competitive event called The Forum that will see the screening of 43 films from around the world, among them Israeli-produced "Ben Zaken" ("An Old Boy"), the debut film of Israeli director Efrat Corem. Corem, a graduate of Sapir College's film program, also wrote the script. TV personality Eliraz Sade plays the role of a single father struggling to raise his only daughter in Ashkelon in southern Israel. The movie, funded in part by the Israeli Film Fund and the Gesher Multicultural Film Fund, will be released in Israeli theaters after the film festival. Sade told Israel Hayom that he was "very excited about Berlin on a personal level." "'Ben Zaken' has a message for everyone; we are just the conduits," he added.
"Two strangers unexpectedly meet at an airport. He mistakenly confuses her to be his assigned driver. She, enchanted by the random encounter, does not hurry to prove him wrong," reads the description for the "Aya" on imdb.com. The couple is played by Ulrich Thomsen from Denmark and French-Israeli actress Sarah Adler.