Noam Harel’s short film, Bring All the Pain, a moving portrait of three reserve soldiers who open up about the wartime horrors they witnessed, is one of the standout projects at Bezalel’s 2026 Graduate Exhibition, which opened Friday at the academy’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Campus in downtown Jerusalem, and which runs until August 6.
More than 500 final projects, encompassing thousands of individual works in art, design, architecture, film, animation, fashion, jewelry, and related fields, are being displayed throughout the campus.
This year’s exhibition coincides with the beginning of Bezalel’s 120th-anniversary celebrations and includes a special presentation of 120 works from the academy’s departments, graduate programs, and schools.
Many of the works inevitably reflect the reality in which their creators have studied and worked over the past several years. Bereavement, trauma, memory, pain, rehabilitation, and renewal recur throughout the exhibition, alongside projects exploring technology, sustainability, traditional crafts, and socially engaged design.
Several films focus on a war whose consequences have touched virtually every aspect of Israeli life.
Harel’s Bring All the Pain was inspired by her reserve-duty service and offers an intimate look at the soldiers tasked with recovering the bodies and taking care of the bodies of fallen soldiers, as well as those of Hamas members and Gazan civilians.
The artistic style of the movie sets it apart from a traditional documentary in the first frames, where a fully clothed young man emerges slowly from the sea. The documentary follows three friends from this unit as they walk through a forest and camp out by the beach. They build a fire and then speak about what they remember from the war.
The beauty of nature and the gentleness of the songs they play and sing present a sharp contrast to the horrific scenes they describe. Some of the soldiers are newly religious, while others grew up ultra-Orthodox, but nothing in their backgrounds prepared them for what they saw and had to do during the war.
They speak about entering operational zones to recover bodies and about being confronted with sights and smells that haunt them. Their words create a vivid portrait of the scenes. Many of us will instinctively turn away when we see graphic images of dead bodies, but the words uttered so softly by these young men will stay with you in a more profound way.
They talk about their coping mechanisms, how they went numb, or, at times, used black humor to make their work bearable, but also emphasize that they did their best to honor all the dead.
Students pay homage to fallen loved ones
One recalls discovering that one of the fallen soldiers was a childhood friend. They also speak about the pain of soldiers brought in from the battlefield to identify their comrades, and of the families of the fallen soldiers.
Another memorable moment is when a soldier describes a flashback to finding bodies of infants when he was with his own child.
We will never fully understand what they experienced, but listening to their words, we may come a little closer to appreciating the effect their experiences have had on them.
Other films that are being shown as part of the exhibit include one by Yaakov Tsym, who documents his family’s life during the two years following the death of his brother, Staff Sgt. Ariel Tsym, 20, of the Nahal Brigade’s 931st Battalion, who was killed fighting in Gaza.
By looking at the family through his camera, he examines not only the initial shock of loss but also the long, complex process of continuing to live after it.
These are just two of dozens of impressive projects in the exhibition.
Bezalel was founded in 1906 by Boris Schatz, and the anniversary exhibition, curated by Bezalel president Prof. Adi Stern and Ilanit Konopny, the academy’s head of curatorial studies, is intended to place the work of the current graduating class within the institution’s long history, even though they are rooted firmly in the present.
The Bezalel Graduate Exhibition is open at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Campus, 1 Zmora Street in Jerusalem, Sunday through Thursday from noon to 10 p.m. and Fridays from noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free.
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