A photo still from the new film “Arava.” Photo: Provided

The Hebrew-language short film Arava will make its world premiere at the Palm Springs International ShortFest on June 22 and is also in the running for the festival’s award for best international short.

The 27-minute coming-of-age story by director and screenwriter Sarah Meital Benjamin takes place in the 2000s and is set in Jerusalem as a teenage girl named Arava returns home after spending six months in a secluded rehab facility. She reunites with her troublemaker best friend Tzipi, who convinces her to go on a trip up north in Israel. As the two runaways hitchhike through the country, they face experiences and situations that force them to confront their own conflicts, identities, hopes and losses as well as their friendship.

“Arava is a story of friendship and unquenched passion between two young girls in an unsafe world, but beyond that, it is a portrait of the complexity, magic, pain and hope in the realities of at-risk youth in Israel,” according to a synopsis for the film.

The film was produced by Michael Utznik and co-written by Batel Zaharaa Mann with cinematography done by Keren Bergman. It stars Swell Ariel Or, from the Netflix Israeli series The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, along with Batel Zaharaa Mann, Itamar Rothchild, Itamar Abuhatzira, Shlomi Shtern, Elisha Shwartz.

Arava is a true story based on Benjamin’s life experiences. The filmmaker was born in Jerusalem to a Mizrahi-Ashkenazi family from a Hasidic community that she then left at a young age.

“Arava is a personal story picked out of my archive of adolescent adventures as a post-religious, bisexual runaway teen who spent
her youth hanging out in the punk scene of Jerusalem,” said Benjamin in a director’s note for the film. “The world of characters, the saturated city, and the unapologetic teen spirit of young adults facing distinct challenging realities, is the beating heart behind the project.”

She added: “Jerusalem at its core is a melting pot that brings together many forms of lives on a daily basis. The main characters of Arava are a depiction of this very reality; religion versus faith, untamed individuality versus a collective identity, and the constant, fruitful battle between fantasy and reality … Although Arava is based on a personal story and set in a very specific world, it is firstly a human story about a young girl in search of belonging, a primal yearning that exists within every human heart.”

ShortFest will take place from June 20-26. All of the festival’s awards, which come with a cash prize between $500-$5,000 and five Academy Award-qualifying awards, will be announced on June 25.

Watch the trailer for Arava below.