Here, there, and everywhere: The 2026 Anthropological Film Festival does the global cultural rounds

The human condition – now there's a taxing one. We spend our entire lives trying to understand or come to terms with who we are, let alone trying to get some sort of handle on people from very different climes. Then again, if we cast our cerebral and emotional nets a little further, we might, by extension, come up with some epiphanous wisdom that may help us get a less pixelated picture of ourselves.That, in part, is the thinking behind the Anthropological Film Festival, which has been running at the Jerusalem Cinematheque, in collaboration with the Department of Anthropology and Sociology of the Hebrew University, for the past decade and a half.The event is overseen by perennial artistic director Nurit Kedar and academic director Prof. Tamar El-Or, with another staff member at the Hebrew University department, anthropologist, researcher, and filmmaker Dr. Lydia Ginzburg, at the academic production helm.The 15th edition of the festival is scheduled for November 17-19, with 14 movies from expansive ethnic and cultural domains lined up for the three-day program. Since its founding, the festival has paired screenings with lectures by academics from a relevant field, and discussions by learned experts on the subject matter at hand.As such, the likes of communications, religion, and gender lecturer at Sapir Academic College Dr.