Founded in 1984, the Jerusalem Film Festival is a baby compared to its European counterparts Venice (1932), Cannes (1946), and Berlin (1951). Israel’s second-oldest film festival after Haifa (founded a year earlier) and the fourth oldest in the Middle East after Cairo (1976) and Damascus (1979), the JFF has become increasingly robust, exciting and ambitious over the past decade. This year’s installment, which kicks off tomorrow and runs until July 19 offers a tantalizing lineup of international cinema from the past 12 months alongside world premieres of Israeli films that will compete for the festival’s awards.  It all kicked off last night with an outdoor screening of Nanni Moretti’s “My Mother,” which won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Several other hits from Cannes are featured on the line-up, including Asif Kapadia’s documentary “Amy,” about Amy Winehouse and new films from two of Asia’s top directors, Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul (the dreamlike “Cemeteries of Splendor”) and Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-Hsien (the martial arts epic “The Assassin,” which won Best Director). Two modern French masters also are represented by Arnaud Desplechin’s autobiographical “My Golden Days” and Philippe Garrel’s relationship drama “In the Shadow of Women,” both of which screened at Cannes outside of the official program. My personal recommendation is “The Lobster,” a dystopic nightmare from the offbeat Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. The English-language film, which stars Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz and John C. Reilly, is set in a future where people must either find a mate or be turned into an animal as punishment. Although it meanders and runs a bit dry in its second half, “The Lobster,” which won the festival’s Jury Prize, is nevertheless a fascinatingly surreal allegory about sexuality and civilization in the tradition of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Weekend” and Louis Malle’s “Black Moon.”

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