Looking for Yadida

Investigating a long suppressed and mysterious incident that has haunted her Yemeni Israeli family, director Israela Shaer Meoded tries to discover what really happened in the early 1950s to her aunt Yadida. Yadida was among the hundreds of Mizrahi Jewish babies separated from their families upon arrival in Israeli immigrant camps and inexplicably “lost,” with their reported deaths never properly accounted for. Her disappearance has lingered over the family like a pall, and the film masterfully weaves together Meoded’s personal search with the larger questions that this troubling national episode has raised for decades.

Using newly released documents and video testimony from nurses, doctors and social welfare workers, as well as her family members’ own fragmented memories, Meoded—who was recently awarded Best Documentary Director at the Jerusalem Film Festival—proves both tenacious in her quest for clues, but also aware of the perils of opening old wounds and asking questions that may never be resolved. Like the fleeting faces of a fully-grown Yadida she imagines seeing on every street corner, the truth can seem so close, yet remain just out of reach. —Peter Stein 

US Premiere

JFI Supported: 2025 Completion Grant

Israela Shaer Meoded is an Israeli film director, screenwriter, and film scholar whose work explores personal and collective memory, gender, and marginalized voices in Israeli society. She teaches cinema at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School, where she lectures in the Department of Screen-Based Arts. Her research focuses on the history of women filmmakers in Israel and Mizrahi feminist-political cinema of the 1970s. Her filmography includes the feature Looking for Yadida (2025), which she wrote and directed, as well as Woman (2019) and Mori: Shabazi’s Riddle (2018). Her short films include Shimon (2019) and Queen Khantarisha (2009).