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The Times of Israel Daily Briefing

Day 719 - ToI doc film event shows the other kinds of Israeli stories

The Times of Israel Daily Briefing

The Times of Israel

News

4.51.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Welcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 20-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world.

Documentary filmmaker Yonatan Nir joins host Jessica Steinberg for today's episode.

Ahead of the launch of season three of DocuNation, the online festival of Israeli documentary films for the Times of Israel Community, Nir discusses how the event got started in March 2020, during the initial outbreak of the coronavirus.

At the time, Nir's screenings were canceled, and he turned to Zoom to offer free screenings and discussions about his films.

DocuNation eventually included other Israeli documentary films that were screened for online audiences, with ToI offering the same concept for English speakers, with subtitled films or films that are mostly in English.

Nir talks about the kinds of films screened, those showing Israeli life and society, the parts of life usually not shown in the news, offering a more uplifting look at life during difficult times.

Check out The Times of Israel's ongoing liveblog for more updates.

For further reading:

Wilfrid Israel, an unsung Holocaust hero, gets his due

In Arctic, polar bear is final frontier for famed Israeli wildlife photographer

He ain’t heavy, he’s my sibling

‘Dolphin Boy’ gets picked up by Disney

Subscribe to The Times of Israel Daily Briefing on Apple PodcastsSpotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Podwaves.

 IMAGE: Documentary filmmaker Yonatan Nir brings third season of DocuNation festival to ToI Community in October 2025 (Courtesy)

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hi and welcome to the Times of Visual's Daily Briefing. It's Jessica Steinberg. I'm your host today.

0:08.4

And today is yet another holiday, Jewish holiday, in the season. And we're bringing you a different kind of daily briefing.

0:14.8

Today I'm going to speak to documentary filmmaker Yonatan Nier of Docuination. And Yonatan's Docuination, which he's going to tell us all about,

0:25.6

is essentially offering the next series for the Times of Israel community.

0:30.6

The format, just so you know, is the same as in the past,

0:33.6

with a film available to stream around once a week,

0:40.1

and then a Q&A, question and answer, Zoom,

0:42.0

with the filmmaker, Yonatan.

0:45.2

And this is for our Times Visual Community only.

0:47.7

Now let me tell you a little bit about Yonatan.

0:50.0

This is not our first interview together,

0:51.5

but it's been a number of years.

0:56.8

He is the award-winning documentary filmmaker behind my hero,

1:04.7

brother, Dolphin Boy, picture of his life. But in the last really more than a few years, he and Olmogorovic, a documentary producer, put together their film company in a sense, but not exactly.

1:13.3

Yonotan will explain it.

1:14.7

It's called Docu Nation.

1:16.5

And it was born in March 2020 when the world really shut down and everyone needed to

1:22.9

connect a little bit more.

1:24.1

We all learned about Zoom, of course.

1:27.4

But Docu Nation, as Yonatan will tell us,

1:30.0

was really pushed by both his need for connection, everyone else's need for connection.

1:37.3

But what's very interesting about it is that it was created in a sense, as many of his films

...

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