The Jerusalem Playlist

Jerusalem Post Podcasts

From Israeli series that break out worldwide to the films turning heads at Cannes and Sundance, The Jerusalem Playlist is The Jerusalem Post's guide to culture in Israel and beyond. Longtime 'Post' film and TV critic Hannah Brown joins Ezra Taylor for reviews, recommendations, and the occasional disagreement about what's actually worth your time. Produced by Gadi Zaig. Hannah Brown has been the film and TV critic for The Jerusalem Post since 2001. Born and raised in New York, she was previously a movie critic at The New York Post, and is the author of the novel If I Could Tell You. Ezra Taylor is the social media manager at The Jerusalem Post. Originally from Salford, England, he has worked with Haaretz and i24NEWS.  Gadi Zaig produces The Jerusalem Playlist. A studio producer at The Jerusalem Post and the producer of the paper's daily JPost Headlines podcast, he is completing an MFA in filmmaking at Tel Aviv University's Steve Tisch School of Film & Television, and is an actor and fixture of Jerusalem's theater scene.

Episodes

  1. 1d ago

    Fauda and Gal Gadot are back, and the timing is no accident

    Israeli TV looks unstoppable, Fauda returns to Netflix, Gal Gadot fronts a new thriller, so why are producers worried? Jerusalem Post film critic Hannah Brown breaks it down. On this episode of The Jerusalem Playlist, Hannah Brown and Ezra Taylor dig into why Fauda's fifth season took years to arrive: creators Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff scrapped a finished script after October 7 and rebuilt the season around it, including two flashback episodes that aired with a violence warning. Brown also unpacks the paradox behind Israel's global TV success: high-concept shows made fast and cheap, like BeTipul (remade abroad as In Treatment). "You can't get much cheaper than that," she says of its two-people-in-a-room premise, "and yet that became the biggest hit." The conversation then turns somewhere few TV shows go: the controversy over Upward Bound, the bestselling novel credited to nonspeaking autistic author Woody Brown, and the debate over the facilitated-communication method behind it. Drawing on her own family's experience, Brown offers a perspective rarely heard in the coverage: That the real goal is helping people on the spectrum communicate for themselves. "The person on the autism spectrum should be really doing the communicating for themselves," she says. From Israeli series that break out worldwide to the films turning heads at Cannes and Sundance, The Jerusalem Playlist is The Jerusalem Post's guide to culture in Israel and beyond. Longtime 'Post' film and TV critic Hannah Brown joins Ezra Taylor for reviews, recommendations, and the occasional disagreement about what's actually worth your time. Produced by Gadi Zaig.

  2. Aug 19

    Why the film world quietly stopped showing Israeli movies

    This week on The Jerusalem Playlist, Ezra Taylor and Hannah Brown talk about three stories in Israeli and Jewish culture. Avi Nesher's October 7 drama Our Loves just landed a slot at the Toronto Film Festival. Last year, Toronto disinvited an Israeli October 7 documentary. This year, they gave one of the biggest platforms to Nesher's film about seven strangers who thought October 6 was the worst day of their lives. Fox Entertainment and Access Entertainment signed on as co-producers. Then, they discussed the upcoming film Just an Illusion. The directors of The Intouchables made their most personal film. A Mizrachi Jewish boy growing up in 1985 Paris, getting ready for his bar mitzvah while his parents fight and his dad loses his job. Two million tickets were sold in France, and both directors lost their fathers during filming. And Hannah talks about something close to home. Feelings In Between is a new exhibition at the Jerusalem Theatre featuring collaborative paintings by autistic adults living at Kfar Shimon. The artists work together silently, without planning, without ego. One of them is Hannah's son Danny. Free entry is through August 30. From Israeli series that break out worldwide to the films turning heads at Cannes and Sundance, The Jerusalem Playlist is The Jerusalem Post's guide to culture in Israel and beyond. Longtime 'Post' film and TV critic Hannah Brown joins Ezra Taylor for reviews, recommendations, and the occasional disagreement about what's actually worth your time. Produced by Gadi Zaig.

About

From Israeli series that break out worldwide to the films turning heads at Cannes and Sundance, The Jerusalem Playlist is The Jerusalem Post's guide to culture in Israel and beyond. Longtime 'Post' film and TV critic Hannah Brown joins Ezra Taylor for reviews, recommendations, and the occasional disagreement about what's actually worth your time. Produced by Gadi Zaig. Hannah Brown has been the film and TV critic for The Jerusalem Post since 2001. Born and raised in New York, she was previously a movie critic at The New York Post, and is the author of the novel If I Could Tell You. Ezra Taylor is the social media manager at The Jerusalem Post. Originally from Salford, England, he has worked with Haaretz and i24NEWS.  Gadi Zaig produces The Jerusalem Playlist. A studio producer at The Jerusalem Post and the producer of the paper's daily JPost Headlines podcast, he is completing an MFA in filmmaking at Tel Aviv University's Steve Tisch School of Film & Television, and is an actor and fixture of Jerusalem's theater scene.