The Cinema South Festival of the School of Audio and Visual Arts at Sapir has been held every year since 2001 at the Sderot Cinematheque and across the city, in the communities and kibbutzim of the Shaar HaNegev Regional Council and the neighboring councils, and in towns throughout the south.The Cinema South Festival is one of the 5 largest and oldest film festivals in Israel, and over its 23 years has hosted hundreds of creators from Israel and around the world, from a wide range of creative fields for cinema, television, animation, soundtracks, acting and more. Our guests, the creators, the audiences, and the partners who have joined the journey have brought the Cinema South Festival to its 22nd year as a major cultural event that is at once very local, telling the southern story with a broad prism of perspectives, but is also universal, capturing through the films it screens the story of the global south, that of the broad margins in society, in art, in culture, in all its nuances. The activity of the Cinema South Festival and the School of Audio and Visual Arts has taken place over the years under unique conditions and at the vortex of a security and human conflict that is deep, complex, and dangerous. It is hard not to notice the manifestations of these living conditions in the school’s films, in the various anthologies, in the events and meetings at the festival, and in the unique atmosphere that each guest feels upon entering the festival premises: a combination of freedom, creative spirit, and constant vigilance. 2023 is the first year in the history of the festival that it did not take place. We hope to see you at the various screening complexes of the "Cinema South Festival on the Road" across the country, and wish our audiences a shared respite, a longing for what was and is not, and hope for new growth.