Tsipi
Reibenbach

Tsipi Reibenbach was born in 1947 in Silesia. In 1950, she emigrated to Israel with her parents, who were survivors of the Holocaust. She studied Mathematics and Physics at the University of Tel-Aviv and worked as a teacher. In October 1973, her husband was killed in the Yom Kippur War. Her direction course graduation film “Windows Plus” was not only an attempt to come to terms with this tragic loss, but also a portrait of herself and four other mothers widowed by Yom Kippur in 1973.

In the years 1988 to 1993, she made the documentary film “Choice and Destiny”: unobtrusive observations of her own aged parents, Yitzhak and Fruma. This film received numerous awards, including the Robert & France Flaherty Grand Prize at the International Documentary Film Festival in Yamagata, Japan, the Prix de la SCAM of the Festival du Cinéma Réel in Paris, and the Audience Award and Special Jury Prize at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam.

Tsipi Reibenbach’s third documentary film, “Three Sisters” (1996-1998), is another family portrait, this time of her mother Fruma and her two sisters. At the same time, it is the story of a lost youth and unfulfilled love. “Three Sisters” won a prize from the Haifa Arts Foundation and the prize for the Best Camera at the festival Doc-Aviv, and was shown at the International Forum of the Berlinale in 1998, as well as in the exhibition “Mythen der Nationen 1945. Der Kampf der Erinnerung” in the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, in 2004/2005.

In her fourth film, “A City with no Pity” (2003), Tsipi Reibenbach returned to her home town Lydda, today Israel’s largest centre of drug dealing. The 5000-year history of the city is buried under ruins and garbage – a symbol of the filmmaker’s memories of childhood as well as a metaphor of the Israeli state. “A City with no Pity” experienced its world premiere in the International Forum of the Berlinale in 2003.

The filmmaker, who has been awarded the prize of the Israeli Ministry of Culture, used her time in Berlin in 2006 to continue work on her current feature film project (working title “Immigrants”). Tsipi Reibenbach lives in Tel-Aviv.