Available Films

15 years

After 15 years together, Yoav, a successful architect, has everything he’s ever wanted and he and his younger lover Dan, a lawyer who idolizes him, seem to have a charmed relationship. Their sex life is still off the charts, their emotional bond is strong and they enjoy an intimate circle of friends. When Yoav’s best friend Alma, an esteemed artist who’s like a mother and sister to him, announces she’s pregnant, it ignites Dan’s desire to become a father himself. But Dan’s parental urges have the opposite effect on Yoav who is haunted by long buried demons, leading him to self-destructive behavior that threatens to destroy his life with Dan, unravel his friendship with Alma, and cost him everything. Yuval Hadadi has written and directed a searing, insightful drama that offers a telling portrait of the emotional darkness lurking beneath the deceptively placid surface.

Director Yuval Hadadi, 2019, Hebrew (with English subtitles), 90 minutes, ADULT CONTENT

Amazon

1945

1945

On a summer day in 1945, an Orthodox man and his grown son return to a village in Hungary while the villagers prepare for the wedding of the town clerk’s son. The townspeople – suspicious, remorseful, fearful, and cunning – expect the worst and behave accordingly. The town clerk fears the men may be heirs of the village’s deported Jews and expects them to demand their illegally acquired property back.

Directed by Ferenc Török, Hungary, 2017, Hungarian (with English subtitles), 91 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

 

Q&A

Wednesday, August 19
12:30pm EDT | 11:30am CDT | 9:30am PDT

Join Moderator Aaron Masliansky the Producer and Host of the podcast, “Inside the Skev,” which is an exploration of the stories and life of the people and places of Skokie and Evanston, Illinois, a community rich in history, culture, and diversity.

Aaron will be joined by Director Ferenc Török who paints a complex picture of a society trying to come to terms with the recent horrors they have experienced, perpetrated, or just tolerated for personal gain. A superb ensemble cast, lustrous black and white cinematography, and historically detailed art direction contribute to an eloquent drama that reiterates Thomas Wolfe’s famed sentiment: you can’t go home again.

Learn More

24 Days

When Ilan Halimi is kidnapped for ransom because he’s Jewish and supposedly rich, his family and the police start a race against time to save him from the tortures of the “gang of barbarians”.

Director: Alexandre Arcady, USA, 2015, French (with English subtitles), 108 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

93 Queen

Brooklyn may be home to modern hipster culture, but it also remains the home of the country’s largest ultraorthodox Jewish community. This insular sect in Borough Park maintains its own set of conservative religious guidelines, including those that dictate that women never show their hair or bare legs in public or engage in physical contact with non-familial men, including shaking hands. And yet in times of medical emergencies and childbirth, it is the men of Hatzolah Emergency Medical Service who intimately care for women. Rachel “Ruchie” Freier and her crew of dutiful yet revolutionary Hasidic women are ready to change this. Freier is a mother of six, a lawyer and a tornado-like force willing to put it all on the line to create the all-women’s volunteer ambulance corps group Ezras Nashim (Hebrew for “helping women”).

Director Paula Eiselt, 2018, USA, 86 minutes

Amazon  Kanopy

A valid public library card and registration is required to view via the Kanopy link

Abe & Phil’s Last Poker Game

When Dr. Abe Mandelbaum (Martin Landau) moves into the nursing home, Cliffside Manor, with his deteriorating wife Molly, he forms an improbable relationship with gambler and womanizer, Phil Nicoletti (Paul Sorvino). Even though at first Abe feels that moving into the home is the end of the road, he soon realizes that his life is finding a whole new beginning. Abe and Phil’s friendship is challenged when a mysterious nurse claims that her biological father resides in the home. Without children of their own, both Abe and Phil jump at the chance to convince Angela, and themselves, that they are her father.

Director, Howard Weiner, 2017, USA, 90 minutes

Amazon  Kanopy

A valid public library card and registration is required to view via the Kanopy link

A Call to Spy

When winning World War II seemed hopeless, one group of extraordinary women changed the course of history forever.

As Great Britain’s forces were stretched thin during World War II, Winston Churchill’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) began to enlist women as spies. Their daunting mission: conduct sabotage and build a resistance. Spymistress Vera Atkins, later the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond franchise, was the chief recruiter for this secret army. Atkins selected two unusual candidates: Virginia Hall, an American journalist from Baltimore hampered by a wooden leg, and Noor Inayat Khan, a wireless officer of Indian descent and an avowed pacifist. Together, they worked to undermine the Nazi regime in France. The courage, sacrifices, and grit of these three women helped quell the Nazi occupation – and ultimately turned the tide of the war.

Director: Lydia Dean Pilcher
2020, USA, English, 123 minutes

Amazon  Youtube

Across the Waters

Across the Waters

Unsure of whom they can trust, a Jewish musician and his family make a frantic escape from Nazi-occupied Denmark, in ACROSS THE WATERS, a gripping story of survival and rescue.

Directed by Nicolo Donato, Starring David Dencik, Denmark, 2017, Danish (with English subtitles), Drama, 95 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

A Fortunate Man

This film by Academy Award-winning director, Bille August, is based upon the Nobel Award Winning novel Lykke Per and it is Denmark’s official entry for the Academy Awards for best foreign film this year. A young man rejects his strict religious upbringing and flees his home and family to become an engineer. As he gets his projects up and running and is about to marry into a rich Jewish family, he quickly climbs the social ladder. But Per’s childhood keeps haunting him and his dogmatic family cannot accept his new life and Jewish fiance.

Director: Billie August
2018, Denmark, Danish and German (with English subtitles), 178 min, MATURE CONTENT/NUDITY

Netflix

aftermath

Aftermath

Franek and Jozek Kalina, sons of a poor farmer, are brothers from a small village in central Poland. Franek immigrated to the United States in the 80’s and cut all ties with his family.  Only when Jozek’s wife arrives in the US, without explanation, does Franek finally return to his homeland.

Directed by Władysław Pasikowskiatej, Poland, Holland, Russia, 2013, Polish (with English subtitles), 110 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

Aida’s Secrets

Aida’s Secrets is a powerful sojourn into the past, steeped in layers of history and reverberating with untold secrets. Generations of family secrets are uncovered in this sweeping international story that begins with the Second World War and concludes with an emotional twenty-first century family reunion. Izak Szewelewicz was born inside the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons camp in 1945 and put up for adoption in Israel. Secret details of his birth mother, an unknown brother in Canada, and his father’s true identity slowly emerge in this astonishingly heartfelt investigative documentary. Poignant questions of identity, resilience, compassion, and the plight of displaced persons are brought to life as brothers Izak and Shep meet in Canada, and travel to Quebec to meet their elderly mother, the mysterious Aida.

Directors Alon & Shaul Schwarz, 2016, Israel, Germany, Hebrew (with English subtitles), 90 minutes

Amazon  iTunes

An Act of Defiance

An Act of Defiance is a riveting historical drama that captures a seminal moment in the fight against racism by courageous South African Jews who risked their lives consigning Apartheid to history. Taking place in 1963, ten political activists — some black, some Jewish — face a possible death sentence for conspiracy to commit sabotage and violent acts against the government. Represented by courageous lawyer Bram Fischer, an unsung hero in the struggle for freedom in South Africa, who risked his career and life to defend these men, the group members plead not guilty, shifting attention instead to the corrupt and grossly unjust political system. An Act of Defiance captures a dark period in South Africa’s recent past, balancing a nail-biting political thriller with spectacular courtroom intrigue while paying tribute to the legendary figures who fought to end one of the greatest injustices in world history.

Director Jean van de Velde, 2017, South Africa, Netherlands, Afrikaans (with English subtitles), 124 minutes

Amazon  iTunes

An Israeli Love Story

Based on the true story of the love affair between Pnina Gary, from Nahalal, and Eli Ben–Zvi, son of Rachel Yanait and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second President of the State of Israel.

Director Dan Wolman, Documentary, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2018, 93 minutes

Amazon

A La Vie

Helene, Lili and Rose met in Auschwitz, where the three twenty-year-old Jewish girls were deported. Thanks to German-speaking Dutch Lili, who was working in the camp kitchen, the two French girls survived. However, after the liberation of the camp, they lost touch. Lili went back to the Netherlands. Rose married a former deportee and settled down in Canada. Helene returned home to France, where she met an old childhood sweetheart, and married him, aware of his impotency caused by sinister doctors carrying out experiments on him in the concentration camp. Determined to find her old companions, Helene puts an ad in a deportees newspaper. Against all odds, the ad is answered, and the women are reunited. The reunion takes place in Berck Plage in the north of France. The women rediscover each other, as well as help each other to overcome their Auschwitz demons.

Director Jean-Jacques Zilbermann, Drama, French (with English subtitles), France, 2014, 104 minutes

Amazon

Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong

In this sparkling romance, Ruby (Chung), a Chinese American toy designer from LA, visits Hong Kong for the first time on business. Finding herself stranded, she meets Josh (Greenberg), a transplanted Jewish New Yorker working in finance, who shows her the city. Meandering through nighttime streets pulsing with energy and possibility, they fall into a winding and carefree conversation, buoyed by an undeniable attraction.  Just as things start to look promising romantically for the pair, the night is stopped short by a surprising revelation.

Director Emily Ting, Comedy, Romance, English, USA, Hong Kong, 2016, 98 minutes

Amazon

A Jewish Girl in Shanghai

Set mainly in and around the Shanghai Ghetto in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during the Second World War, the film tells the story of three children. Rina and her younger brother Mishalli are Jewish refugees who escaped Europe but are without their parents. A-Gen is a Chinese orphan boy who meets Rina and helps her and her brother to survive. The children form strong friendships and have adventures as they try and fend off the Japanese army occupying the city, and their allies, the Nazis. In the background, the Second Sino-Japanese War takes place, while the children must face the uncertainty that concerns the fate of Rina and Mishalli’s parents in Europe.

Directors Wang Genfa, Zhang Zhenhui, Animation, Mandarin, Hebrew (with English subtitles), China, 2010, 80 minutes

Go2Films

Autism in Love

Autism in Love follows the story of four adults with an autism spectrum disorder as they search for and manage romantic relationships.

Lenny, a 22 year-old native Californian, has been struggling to come to terms with who he is and accept autism. This label has been one of the biggest hurdles for him to overcome and has made meeting girls and dating seemingly impossible. As a young man, he’s beginning to have strong sexual desires and impulses, and he’s not quite sure what to do with those.

Dave and Lindsey have been together for 8 years. Like most committed couples, they’ve been in different places at different times during the course of their relationship. Now, they have finally reached the point where they need to align themselves as individuals so they can unite as a strong couple ready to enter a marriage successfully.

In the twilight of his 20-year marriage, Stephen and Gita are going through the biggest challenge of their relationship when it’s revealed that Gita has been battling ovarian cancer for a few years. Although Stephen is the participant most profoundly affected by his autism, it is clear to see that their love for each other is as real as it gets.

These heartbreaking and brave individuals round up the ensemble cast of Autism in Love as they take audiences on a journey that urges them question and reevaluate their own ideals of what it means to love and be loved. Director Matt Fuller, 2015, USA, English, 76 minutes

Vimeo

A Mirror for the Sun

Tamar Ariel grew up in a religious home in a moshav in southern Israel. Encouraged to follow her dreams, she did two years of voluntary National Service and then joined the IDF Air Force, where she served as the first-ever Jewish Orthodox combat navigator. In 2014, wishing for new experiences after her military service, she traveled to Nepal. She reached the peak of the Annapurna mountain range with a group of Israeli and international hikers, only to encounter an unexpected snow storm. Tamar and her companions found themselves in a life and death struggle against the elements.

Director Neta Ariel, Documentary, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2018,  60 minutes.

Go2Films

A Tale of Love and Darkness

Academy Award-winner Natalie Portman stars in this extraordinary adaptation of Amos Oz’s celebrated memoir set during the birth of Israel. A powerful saga unlike any other, A Tale of Love and Darkness is Oz’s love letter to his mother (Natalie Portman), who struggles with post-war realities while raising her son in Jerusalem at the end of the British Mandate for Palestine and the early years of the State of Israel. Dealing with a married life of unfulfilled promises and integration in a foreign land, she battles depression and can only escape in a world of daydreams. Tragic, comic, and utterly honest, A Tale of Love and Darkness is an affectionate portrait that presents an astonishing visual aesthetic infusing every frame, making it a wondrous rendition of Oz’s compelling life story.

Director: Natalie Portman, 2015, Israel, Hebrew (with English subtitles), 95 minutes

Amazon  iTunes

Baba Joon

Yitzhak runs the turkey farm his father built after they emigrated from Iran to Israel. He hopes his 13-year-old son, Moti, will continue the proud family tradition, but his passion lies in fixing up cars. Yitzhak takes Moti’s refusal to take over the farm as a personal rejection, and the result sets off a chain of events that causes familial turmoil. BABA JOON is an inspiring tale about a father coming to terms with a son who has far different plans for his life.

Director Yuval Delshad, Israel, 2015 Persian, Hebrew (with English subtitles) 91 minutes

Vimeo

Bang! The Bert Berns Story

Music meets the Mob in this biographical documentary, narrated by Steven Van Zandt, about the life and career of Bert Berns, the most important songwriter and record producer from the sixties that you never heard of. His hits include “Twist and Shout”, “Hang On Sloopy” and “Piece of My Heart.” Berns helped launch the careers of Van Morrison and Neil Diamond and produced some of the greatest soul music ever made. Featuring interviews with those who knew him best including: Ben E. King, Keith Richards and Paul McCartney.

Director(s): Brett Burns, Bob Sarles
2016, USA, English, 94 minutes

Amazon

Ben Gurion, Epilogue

The film brings to life a lost interview with of one of the modern history’s greatest leaders, David Ben-Gurion. It is 1968, he is 82 and lives in the desert. Ben-Gurion’s introspective soul-searching provides a surprising vision for crucial decisions Israel needs to make today. At the time of the global leadership crisis, the film also brings thought-provoking insights about the role of leaders in today’s complex world.

Director Yariv Mozer. Documentary, Hebrew, French, Spanish (with English subtitles), Israel, France, 2016. 70 minutes

Go2Films

Big Sonia

91-year-old Sonia Warshawski, great-grandmother, businesswoman, and Holocaust survivor, runs the tailor shop she’s owned for more than 30 years. But when she’s served an eviction notice, the specter of retirement prompts Sonia to resist her harrowing past. A poignant story of generational trauma and healing, and a laugh-out-loud portrait of the power of love to triumph over bigotry, and the power of truth-telling to heal us all.

Director Leah Warshawski, Todd Soliday, Documentary, Family, History, English, USA, 2016, 93 minutes

Amazon

Belle & Sebastian

In 1943, in the French Alps, the orphan Sébastien lives in a small village with his grandfather César, who is a shepherd, and his aunt Angélina, who is a baker. Sébastien misses his mother and believes she has traveled to America. He expects to get a watch with compass as a gift from her. The local Dr. Guillaume is a member of the Frech resistance that helps Jewish refugees to flee to Switzerland and the German Lieutenant Peter and troop are hunting down the resistance. When sheep are found slaughtered, César and the other residents believe that a stray dog that has been abused by his owner is the responsible and hunt it down. Sébastien finds the dog, gives the name of Belle to her and they become friends. But the animal is considered a beast by the inhabitants. Will Sébastien be capable to save Belle?

Director Nicolas Vanier, Adventure, Drama, Family, French, German (with English subtitles), France, 2013, 104 minutes

Amazon

Beneath the Silence

Israel 1973. Six years after the Six Day War, Menashe is still deeply traumatized by his experiences as a soldier. He withdraws from society and spends hours aimlessly driving around in his red pickup. His young wife Daphna and their 10-year old son Shlomi suffer under his silence and rejection. At a time when PTSD is still not recognized as a medical condition, Daphna struggles to get help from the military. When the Yom Kippur War breaks out and Menashe is sent again to the battlefield, his family threaten to finally fall apart.

Director(s) Erez Mizrahi, Sahar Shavit, Feature, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2018, 106 minutes

Go2Films

Bogdan’s Journey

In a story that begins with murder and ends with reconciliation, one man persuades the people of Kielce, Poland, to confront the truth about the darkest moment in their past: Kielce was the site of Europe’s last Jewish pogrom – an organized massacre. In 1946, forty holocaust survivors seeking shelter in a downtown building were murdered by townspeople. Communist authorities suppressed the story, leaving the town deeply embittered. Directors Michal Jaskulski, Lawrence Loewinger, Documentary, Polish, Hebrew (with English subtitles), USA, Poland, 2016, 83 minutes

For Bogdan Bialek, a Catholic Pole, anti-Semitism is a sin. This conviction is the animating force of his life. Conflict over the massacre was still a festering wound when Bialek moved to Kielce in the late 70s. He was shocked by the poisoned atmosphere of his new town. Trained as a psychologist, he has made it his life’s work both to persuade people to embrace their past and to reconnect the city with the international Jewish community.

Amazon

The Hedy Lamarr Story

What do the most ravishingly beautiful actress of the 1930s and 40s and the inventor whose concepts were the basis of cell phone and bluetooth technology have in common? They are both Hedy Lamarr, the glamour icon whose ravishing visage was the inspiration for Snow White and Cat Woman and a technological trailblazer who perfected a radio system to throw Nazi torpedoes off course during WWII. Weaving interviews and clips with never-before-heard audio tapes of Hedy speaking on the record about her incredible life—from her beginnings as an Austrian Jewish emigre to her scandalous nude scene in the 1933 film Ecstasy to her glittering Hollywood life to her ground-breaking, but completely uncredited inventions to her latter years when she became a recluse, impoverished and almost forgotten—BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY brings to light the story of an unusual and accomplished woman, spurned as too beautiful to be smart, but a role model to this day.

Director Alexandra Dean, Documentary, English, USA, 2017, 90 minutes

KinoNow

Breakfast at Ina’s

Ina Pinkney is a Chicago legend of the tastiest kind. Known around town as the “Breakfast Queen”, she has been feeding Chicagoans for the past 33 years – first, out of a small bakery and, most recently, from her beloved breakfast nook in the West Loop. Ina, who survived polio as an infant, now suffers the effects of post-polio syndrome, and made the decision to close the doors of her celebrated establishment at the close of 2013. An undeniably outstanding chef and businesswoman, Ina is so much more. She’s a community leader, a pioneer, a television personality, but most importantly, she’s the rare sort of person who’s found a way to transform her passion into a joy that extends an entire city, and beyond. The documentary, “Breakfast at Ina’s” gives audiences a glimpse into Ina’s extraordinary life, all while chronicling the last days of the restaurant as Ina and her staff serve up its final meals.

Director Mercedes Kane, Documentary, English, USA, 2015, 50 minutes

Amazon

 

Q&A

On April 29, we had a Q&A about the film. View a recording of the event here.

Budapest Noir

Budapest, 1936. Zsigmond Gordon is a crime reporter cut from classic film noir cloth. He takes a cynical view of politics, including the sudden death of the Hungarian prime minister, whose fondness for Adolph Hitler has inspired Hungary’s fascists. It is a chance meeting with an alluring woman, however, that really triggers Gordon’s curiosity, especially when she later turns up murdered, a Jewish prayer her only possession. Sniffing a human-interest story (he’s more ambitious than altruistic), Gordon sets out to learn her identity and transform her death from back-page filler to front-page news.  Adapted by Éva Gárdos and András Szekér from the popular Hungarian bestseller by Vilmos Kondor, Budapest Noir exploits the echoes of classic hardboiled detective fiction to probe the specifics of Hungarian national identity and tells a timeless tale of soul corruption.

Director Éva Gárdos, 2018, Hungarian (with English subtitles), Hungary, 95 minutes

Amazon  Kanopy

A valid public library card and registration is required to view via the Kanopy link

Bye Bye Germany

A post-war comedy as a heartfelt ode to life, Bye Bye Germany is a tale of rebirth and a reminder of how maintaining a sense of humor is a vital step toward redemption. At the end of the Third Reich, most surviving Jews from the Holocaust understandably left Germany as quickly as possible. But former Sachsenhausen inmate David Bermann (Moritz Bleibtreu, from MJFF 2015 film Woman in Gold), one of about 4,000 other real-life survivors who remained, sees his scarred homeland as the land of opportunity. He dreams of reopening his family’s seized linen business in Frankfurt, but American forces deny him a license; with his haughty demeanor and fancy suit, David is ironically suspected of being a Nazi collaborator by occupation forces and is subject to questioning by Special Agent Sara Simon (Antje Traue, from MJFF 2015 film Woman in Gold). Undaunted, he gathers a group of Jewish salesmen to help him peddle imported linens door-to-door, stressing that they should never resort to stoking German guilt to seal the deal — they are to be legitimate businessmen, not victims.

Director Sam Garbarski, Germany, 2017, German (with English subtitles), 102 minutes

Amazon  iTunes

Café Nagler

During the 1920s, Café Nagler was the hottest place in Berlin. The director embarks on a journey to find out what’s left of the legendary café owned by her family. After discovering that family myths don’t always match historical facts, she’ll re-create her family’s past together with her Berlin peers.

Director Mor Kaplansky, Documentary, Hebrew, German (with English subtitles), Israel, Germany, 2015, 59 minutes

Go2Films

Chichinette: The Accidental Spy

The untold story of Marthe Cohn, a feisty young woman who joined the French resistance during WWII. After keeping silent for almost 60 years, Marthe now shares the extraordinary story of how she managed to beat the odds and fight the Nazis as a spy. At the age of 98, she still tours the world, showing off her medals and promoting her message to people of all generations. Her harrowing journey is told with reverence, while her joie de vivre shines through, filling the film with hope for the future.

Director Nicola Alice Hens, Documentary, French (with English subtitles), Germany, France, 2019, 86 minutes

KinoNow

City of Joel

Director Jesse Sweet’s fascinating documentary shines a light on an insular but growing segment of American Jewry. A community of Hasidim fled the cost and crowds of Brooklyn to create Kiryas Joel (City of Joel), today a village of 22,000 members, in upstate New York. Its founder, Joel Teitelbaum, one of the few rabbis to survive the Holocaust, created this thriving ultra-Orthodox community almost four decades earlier as a rebuke to the Nazis. Residents of the pastoral town of Monroe in Orange County and their Yiddish-speaking neighbors have lived peacefully together until Kiryas Joel sought to double its geographic footprint to keep up with its population. The Emmy-winning filmmaker was given unprecedented access to talk with Hasidic leaders and to follow the ensuing clash of cultures as tensions grow between Kiryas Joel residents and their secular neighbors. Residents of Orange County are concerned about the environmental consequences of the proposed expansion but Kiryas Joel residents, who wield significant political power, charge anti-Semitism.

Director Jesse Sweets, USA, 2018, English, Yidddish (with English subtitles), 83 minutes

Amazon  Kanopy

A valid public library card and registration is required to view via the Kanopy link

closed season

Closed Season

Structured through flashback and a German student’s search for his biological father in 1970s Israel, Closed Season is Albert’s story (Christian Friedel): a Jewish boy fleeing Nazi persecution during WWII. Traveling through the mountains of the Black Forest and unable to cross the heavily patrolled Swiss border, he finds shelter with a farmer, Fritz (Hans-Jochen Wagner), and his wife Emma (Brigitte Hobmeier). Fritz and Emma, who have been unable to conceive, propose an unusual arrangement and request Albert father a child with Emma in exchange for continued shelter and protection.

Directed by Franziska Schlotterer, Germany, 2014, German (with English subtitles), Drama.  104 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

Cloudy Sunday

Cloudy Sunday is a compelling drama about love, and about the evil and brutality of war, made even more poignant by the wistful songs of Vassilis Tsitsanis and the enchanting classics of Sephardic Jewish music. One of the first films to ever confront the story of Jewish persecution in Greece, Cloudy Sunday blends history and fiction as it uncovers the untold story of Thessaloniki’s Sephardic Jewish community during the Second World War. Set in 1942, this film explores how the life of the people of Thessaloniki changed drastically after the implementation of the racist Nuremberg laws during the German occupation. In the midst of this conflict, a forbidden love story unfolds between a young Jewish girl and a resistance fighter, in a time when everybody was divided and forced to choose sides. The only place to escape the growing hatred and inhumanity is a small club where the great Greek composer Vasilis Tsitsanis fills the hearts and minds of people with beautiful rebetika folk music.

Director Manoussos Manoussakis, 2017, Greece, Greek (with English subtitles), 116 minutes

Tubi

Crip Camp

In the early 1970s, teenagers with disabilities faced a future shaped by isolation, discrimination, and institutionalization. Camp Jened, a ramshackle camp “for the handicapped” (a term no longer used) in the Catskills, exploded those confines. Jened was their freewheeling Utopia, a place with summertime sports, smoking and make-out sessions awaiting everyone, and campers experienced liberation and full inclusion as human beings. Their bonds endured as many migrated West to Berkeley, California — a hotbed of activism where friends from Camp Jened realized that disruption, civil disobedience, and political participation could change the future for millions.

Crip Camp is the story of one group of people and captures one moment in time. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other equally important stories from the Disability Rights Movement that have not yet received adequate attention. We are committed to using the film’s platform to amplify additional narratives in the disability rights and disability justice communities – with a particular emphasis on stories surrounding people of color and other intersectionally marginalized communities. We stand by the creed of nothing about us, without us. For too long, too many were excluded, and it is time to broaden the number of voices and share the mic.

Directors Nicole Newnham & Jim LeBrecht
2020, USA, English, 107 minutes RATED R

Netflix

Deli Man

Laugh your way through hilarious stories of American delicatessens while drooling over the wonderful Jewish food being prepared before your eyes. From New York to Chicago to San Francisco (SF’s very own Wise Sons), and even to Texas, enjoy the oddball company of the obsessed deli proprietors behind the corned beef, the kreplach, and the magnificent matzol ball soup. You won’t want to miss third-generation Houston deli owner Ziggy Gruber, the maven of deli mavens!

Director Erik Greeberg Anjou, USA, 2012, 91 minutes

Amazon  Kanopy

A valid public library card and registration is required to view via the Kanopy link

Denial

Based on the acclaimed book Denial: Holocaust History on Trial, the film recounts Deborah E. Lipstadt’s (Academy Award-winning actress, Rachel Weisz) legal battle for historical truth against David Irving (BAFTA nominee, Timothy Spall), who accused her of libel when she declared him a Holocaust denier. In the English legal system, in cases of libel, the burden of proof is on the defendant, therefore it was up to Lipstadt and her legal team, led by Richard Rampton (Academy Award-nominated actor, Tom Wilkinson), to prove the essential truth that the Holocaust occurred.

Director Mick Jackson, Drama, German, Hebrew (with English subtitles), USA, UK, 2016, 109 minutes

Amazon

dough

Dough

Curmudgeonly widower Nat Dayan (Jonathan Pryce) clings to his way of life as a Kosher bakery shop owner in London’s East End. Understaffed, Nat reluctantly enlists the help of teenager Ayyash (Jerome Holder), who has a secret side gig selling marijuana to help his immigrant mother make ends meet. When Ayyash accidentally drops his stash into the mixing dough, the challah starts flying off the shelves and an unlikely friendship forms between the old Jewish baker and his young Muslim apprentice.

UK, 2016, Comedy, English, 94 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

Dragonfly

Told with heart, humor, and a little bit of magic, Dragonfly is a female led feature film about homecoming and healing for a Midwestern family divided by divorce and illness.

Struggling artist Anna Larsen’s mother has never understood her. When her mom is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, Anna returns home to help but brings years of family baggage with her. As she unpacks her past, Anna rediscovers a mysterious mailbox from her childhood and embarks on a search to solve its mystery. What she learns along the way may just be the key to rekindling her own magic.

Director Maribeth Romslo, Documentary, English, USA, 2016, 76 minutes

Amazon

Echo

Avner suspects his wife Ella of having an affair. Secretly recording her telephone conversations, he turns into a spy in his own home, listening to them again and again. But while searching for one thing, he discovers another – the woman he listens to is a stranger to him, so very different from the one he thought he knew. He tries to understand that woman, to decode their relationship, but the more he knows, the less he understands.

Directors Amikam Kovner, Assaf Snir, Feature, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2018, 98 minutes

Go2Films

Elish’s Notebooks

82-year-old Elisheva Rise passed away. As her children clear out her home, they find journals she secretly wrote to each of them documenting their lives from their birth until her last day. Every evening she would sit in her kibbutz home and write to her 7 children, whom she had never hugged nor kissed. Following the treasure, she left behind, they embark on an emotional and painful journey, learning about childhood, motherhood, and parenting.

Director Golan Rise, Documentary, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2017, 74 minutes

Go2Films

Every Face Has a Name

In search of the anonymous faces of the people freed from Nazi camps, who debarked in Malm , Sweden, on April 28 1945.

Director: Magnus Gertten
2015, Sweden, Swedish, Polish, Norwegian (with English subtitles), 75 minutes

Tubi  Kanopy

Ewa

Yoel and Ewa are long married. One day, Yoel learns to his surprise that he owns property and that one of the tenants knows Ewa well. As he tries to solve the mystery, his life changes forever. A poignant portrait of a moment in life of a couple, when the struggle to share an entire life with a person who is different from you comes to a dramatic edge.

Director Haim Tabakman, Feature, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2016, 89 minutes

Go2Films

Family in Transition

The story of a family in Nahariya, a small traditional town in Israel, whose lives change completely after their father finally decides to tell his family that he’s a transgender woman. Their mother chooses to stay with her spouse through the whole process, but just as it seems that life is back to normal, she takes a sharp turn and shakes everything up again.

Director Ofir Trainin, Documentary, Hebrew (with English subtitles), 2018, 70 minutes

Go2Films

Famous Nathan

We all love a good rags-to-riches story. They fuel the so-called American Dream. The steel industry figured prominently in one such narrative. Blue jeans in another. However, one of the more unlikely success stories revolves around the humble frankfurter. Famous Nathan tells the remarkable story of Nathan Handwerker, who emigrated from Poland to the US as a 22-year-old in 1912, unable to read or write a word of English. Four years later, Nathan was selling franks on Coney Island for five cents, and the combination of quality and affordability soon made Nathan’s Famous a household phrase in New York. Nathan’s grandson, Lloyd Handwerker, has spent the past 30 years filming interviews with family members, former employees and Coney Island merchants. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interview footage, archival film, home movies and rare audio recordings, Handwerker weaves them together to eloquently tell the tale of Nathan the fast food pioneer, upstanding member of the Jewish community and family man. Beloved by his employees and his grandchildren, but feared by his sons, Nathan built an iconic business from scratch that the next generation could not sustain. Famous Nathan is a quintessentially American tale of food, family, and faith.

Director Lloyd Handwerker, 2014, USA, 86 minutes

Amazon  Kanopy

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fanny's journey

Fanny’s Journey

Based on a true story, FANNY’S JOURNEY is an incredible tale of bravery, strength and survival, a story of a daring young girl who will stop at nothing and fear no one. In 1943, 13-year old Fanny and her younger sisters were sent from their home in France to an Italian foster home for Jewish children. When the Nazis arrive in Italy, their caretakers desperately organize the departure of the children to Switzerland. When they are suddenly left on their own, these 11 children do the impossible and reach the Swiss border to freedom.

Directed by Lola Doillon, France/Belgium, 2016, French (with English subtitles), Drama, 94 minutes

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Félix and Meira

Félix and Meira is a story of an unconventional romance between two people living vastly different realities mere blocks away from one another. Each lost in their everyday lives, Meira (Hadas Yaron), a Hasidic Jewish wife and mother and Félix (Martin Dubreuil), a Secular loner mourning the recent death of his estranged father, unexpectedly meet in a local bakery in Montreal’s Mile End district. What starts as an innocent friendship becomes more serious as the two wayward strangers find comfort in one another. As Félix opens Meira’s eyes to the world outside of her tight-knit Orthodox community, her desire for change becomes harder for her to ignore, ultimately forcing her to choose: remain in the life that she knows or give it all up to be with Félix. Giroux’s film is a poignant and touching tale of self-discovery set against the backdrops of Montreal, Brooklyn, and Venice, Italy.

Director Maxime Giroux, Drama, Romance, French | Yiddish | Spanish | Hebrew | Italian (with English subtitles), Canada, 2015. 105 minutes

Amazon

Fig Tree

Ethiopian-Israeli writer-director Aäläm-Wärqe Davidian makes a startlingly confident feature debut with this story of lives torn asunder by civil war. Set in Addis Ababa in 1989, Fig Tree follows a teenage girl’s harrowing coming of age.

Mina is 16 years old. The Ethiopian Civil War has been underway her entire life. She lives with her brother and grandmother in a humble house with newsprint for wallpaper. The family is Jewish and is planning to flee Ethiopia for Israel, where Mina’s mother awaits their reunion. But this plan leaves out the person Mina loves most: Eli, her Christian boyfriend, who lives in the woods so as to evade being drafted into Mengistu Haile Mariam’s army. Mina hatches a scheme to save Eli, but everyone and everything seems set against her.

Drawing upon her own memories of growing up in war torn Ethiopia, which she left at age 11, Davidian’s approach is unsentimental and focused on her heroine’s plight. In capturing the particular nature of Mina’s life, Davidian blurs the lines between the quotidian and the extraordinary: we see her attend school or cuddle with Eli under the shade of a fig tree via the same clean, cool camerawork that shows her watching boys being scooped off the street and corralled into military vehicles, or discovering a paraplegic soldier attempting suicide. Fig Tree offers us a rare opportunity to better understand the impact of civil war on the lives of ordinary people — and it pulls no punches.

Director: Aäläm-Wärqe Davidian
2018, Ethiopia, Israel, Germany, France, Amharic (with English subtitles), 93 minutes

Tubi Kanopy

Fluchkes

Over the course of a year, a group of women in their 70s and 80s confront the intense demands of the art of dance and refuse to conform to any stereotypes about aging. They open up about their lives, rivalries and sexuality, and share an unquenchable thirst for life, art, and self-expression.

Director Ofer Inov, Documentary, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2011, 54 minutes

Go2Films

GI Jews: Jewish Americans in WWII

The first feature-length documentary for national public television to tell the profound and remarkable story of the 550,000 Jewish Americans who served in World War II. Like all Americans, they fought against fascism, but they also waged a more personal fight—to save their brethren in Europe.

Director Lisa Ades, Documentary, English, USA, 2018, 87 minutes

Amazon

Gisi

Fleischmann believed she could stop the Holocaust if only she succeeded to raise enough money. She led a resistance group in Slovakia which tried to stop the transports to Auschwitz by bribing Nazi officials. Her story has been almost forgotten until the Slovak National Theatre staged a play about her. The film follows the creative process of putting on the play, interweaving it with Gisi’s letters, insights of historians and memories of her relatives.

Director Natasha Dudinski, Documentary, Slovak, Czech, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic (Slovakia), United States, 2014, 62 minutes

Go2Films

Golden Boys

Every week, 10 elderly gays gather in a room lighten by neon lights in the LGBT Center of Tel-Aviv. Being part of a community that sanctifies youth, this intimate space is these old gays last and only shelter, where they can age and deal with aging openly: from sexuality and body image at old age, to loneliness and to the member’s condition as widowers, divorcees and-or grandparents. Instead of the typical sociological and biographical documentation, the movie follows these witty seniors and their funny dialogues in the room and gives a humoristic glimpse to the ruthless process of aging.

Director Revital Gal, Documentary, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2016, 56 minutes

Go2Films

Good Morning Son

A young IDF soldier critically injured during a Gaza military operation, clings to life while his family maintains a bedside vigil, in the sensitive Israeli drama. Sharon Bar-Ziv writes, directs and stars in this intimate chamber ensemble, playing anxious father David whose son Ori lies comatose in a hospital bed, hovering between life and death. David and his wife Naomi (Keren Mor) rarely leave Ori’s side, speaking softly to him, praying and watching for any sign of improvement. During the long wait, family, friends, doctors and therapists struggle to temper expectations and cope with the strain of the situation that sees moments of heartbreak, humor and hope. This beautifully rendered story of human resilience offers insight into the ordeal faced by military families in Israel and throughout the world.

Director Sharon Bar-Ziv, Feature, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2018, 84 minutes

Go2Films

Hagiga: The Story of Israeli Cinema

This milestone documentary series challenges the way we think about the history of Israeli cinema. Combining hundreds of interviews captured over two years with rare archival footage from behind the cameras, the series follows Israeli cinema from the 1960s up to these days, investigates the key figures of Israeli cinema and their films.

Director Noit Geva. Documentary, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel. 2017, 2 parts – each 73 minutes

Go2Films Part 1  Go2Films Part 2

Hannah Arendt

A biopic of the influential German-Jewish philosopher and political theorist. Arendt’s reporting on the 1961 trial of ex-Nazi Adolf Eichmann in The New Yorker—controversial both for her portrayal of Eichmannand the Jewish councils—introduced her now-famous concept of the “Banality of Evil.” Using footage from the actual Eichmann trial and weaving a narrative that spans three countries, von Trotta beautifully turns the often-invisible passion for thought into immersive, dramatic cinema.

Director Margarethe von Trotta, Documentary, German (with English subtitles), Germany, 2012, 113 minutes

KinoNow

Harmonia

This award-winning film is based around an adaptation of the biblical story of Sarah, Hagar, Abraham, Yitzak, and Ismail, from the book of Genesis. But this production is anything but biblical in its look and style: it is set inside the inner sanctum of a contemporary philharmonic orchestra in today’s Jerusalem. This journey of rediscovery is centered around Sarah, a beautiful harpist who is married to Abraham, a fiery, charismatic and authoritarian conductor of the orchestra. With no children, their life totally revolves around music until Hagar, a young horn player from East Jerusalem, joins the orchestra. Sarah and Hagar form a very close friendship, so close that Hagar offers to have Sarah’s child. The baby Ismail is born with a precocious musical ability and a wild and untamed spirit. With a dynamic musical score and peppered with astonishing orchestral performances, the drama gets complicated when Ismail discovers the true identity of his mother.

Director Ori Sivan, 2016, Israel, Hebrew (with English subtitles), 97 minutes

Amazon  iTunes

heading home

Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel

A stirring story of sports, patriotism and personal growth, Heading Home charts the underdog journey of Israel’s national baseball team competing for the first time in the World Baseball Classic. After years of defeat, Team Israel is finally ranked among the world’s best in 2017, eligible to compete in the prestigious international tournament. Their line-up included several Jewish American Major League players―Ike Davis, Josh Zeid and ex-Braves catcher Ryan Lavarnway―most with a tenuous relationship to Judaism, let alone having ever set foot in Israel. Their odyssey takes them from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where they are greeted as heroes, to Seoul where they must debunk their has-been, wannabe reputations. With their Mensch on the Bench mascot by their side, the team laughs, cries, and does much soul-searching, discovering the pride of representing Israel on the world stage.

Directed by Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller, and Jeremy Newberger, USA / Israel / Japan / South Korea, 2018, Documentary, English, 86 minutes

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Q&A

On April 6, 2020, we had a Q&A about the film. View a recording of the event here.

Heather Booth: Changing the World

The newest film by critically acclaimed filmmaker Lilly Rivlin is an inspiring look at how social change happens. Booth, a renowned organizer and activist, began her remarkable career at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Looking at Booth’s life, work and personal relationship with respected leaders such as Julian Bond and Senator Elizabeth Warren, the film explores the most pivotal moments in progressive movements that altered our history over the last fifty years.

Director Lilly Rivlin, Documentary, English, USA, 2016, 60 minutes

Amazon

Henri Dauman: Looking Up

Holocaust survivor and New York City resident Henri Dauman has been called one of the greatest photojournalists of the 20th century. Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, Miles Davis, Yves Saint Laurent, Andy Warhol, Elvis Presley.

Director: Peter Jones
2018, USA, English, 86 minutes

Amazon  Kanopy

Hope I’m In The Frame

Michal Bat-Adam was the first Israeli woman film director and the only one who has been creating films since 1970s. The intimate portrait of the trailblazing filmmaker follows her shooting a new low-budget film while exploring her relationship with her husband of 40 years, the film director Moshe Mizrahi, as they share the struggle to make films despite aging and the establishment’s rejection.

Director(s) Netalie Braun, Documentary, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2017, 57 minutes

Go2Films

Humor Me

A struggling playwright is forced to move in with his joke-telling dad in a New Jersey retirement community and learns, as his father often says, “life’s going to happen, whether you smile or not.” Featuring Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Concords), Elliott Gould (MASH, The Long Goodbye), Bebe Neuwirth (Cheers), Annie Potts (Ghostbusters, Pretty in Pink) and singer Ingrid Michaelson.

Director Sam Hoffman, Comedy, English, USA, 2018, 85 minutes

Amazon

Hummus! The Movie

Hummus – the delicious, nutritious superfood sweeping America – has the power to bring Muslims, Christians and Jews together… in the Middle East, America and around the world. Hummus – an Arabic word meaning ‘chickpeas’ (its main ingredient) – is claimed by all and owned by none.

In Hummus! The Movie we meet three main characters – a hard working Muslim woman, an ever-smiling Jew and a young Christian Arab on a restless quest for meaning. But despite their historical and cultural differences they all have one thing in common… a passionate love of Hummus!

Director Oren Rosenfeld, Documentary, Hebrew, Arabic (with English subtitles), Israel, USA, 2016, 70 minutes

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Q&A

On April 30, we had a Q&A about the film. View a recording of the event here.

In Between

Dana and Amit got to know each other at the age of 25. Two years later, they got married. Shortly before the birth of their second child, Amit becomes religious. Can their love overcome the growing gap between their ways of life?

Directors David Ofek & Neta Shoshani, Documentary, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2014, 45 minutes

Go2Films

in search of israeli cuisine

In Search of Israeli Cuisine

In Search of Israeli Cuisine is a portrait of the Israeli people told through food. It puts a literal face on the culture of Israel. Profiling chefs, home cooks, farmers, vintners, and cheese makers drawn from the more than 100 cultures that make up Israel today – Jewish, Arab, Muslim, Christian, Druze a rich, complex and human story emerges.

Directed by Roger Sherman, USA, 2016, English, Documentary, 94 minutes

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Indignation

Set in 1951, the story follows Marcus Messner, the idealistic son of a humble kosher butcher from Newark, N.J. Marcus leaves for Ohio to study at a small, conservative college, where he finds himself at odds with the administration, grapples with anti-Semitism and sexual repression and pines after a troubled girl.

Director James Schamus, Drama, Germany, Luxembourg, France, Israel, German, French, Hebrew and Latin (with English subtitles), 2016, 110 minutes

Amazon

Insatiable: The Homaro Cantu Story

At the age of 27, innovative chef and inventor Homaro Cantu helped put Chicago on the culinary map when he opened “Moto,” a Michelin-starred avant-garde restaurant in the city’s untapped Fulton Market meatpacking district.  Virtually overnight, Cantu rose to the rank of celebrity chef and became famous for his “molecular gastronomy” approach to cooking.  Cantu’s meteoric rise to fame masked an early life of poverty, homelessness, and even physical and emotional abuse. At the height of his fame in 2015, during production of this documentary, Cantu took his own life.

Director Brett A Schwartz, Documentary, English, USA, 2016, 98 minutes

Amazon

inside hana's suitcase

Inside Hana’s Suitcase

The delivery of a battered suitcase to Fumiko Ishioka at the Tokyo Holocaust Museum begins the true-life mystery that became the subject of Karen Levineʼs best-selling book Hanaʼs Suitcase. The suitcase came from the Auschwitz Museum and had Hana Bradyʼs name painted on it. Larry Weinsteinʼs masterful film follows Fumikoʼs search to discover the details of Hanaʼs life, which leads to the discovery of her brother George in Toronto. The voices of children from Japan, Canada, and the Czech Republic telling Hanaʼs story are woven around the drama, along with Georgeʼs memories and Fumikoʼs quest, to create a film of astonishing power and hope.

Directed by Larry Weinstein, Documentary, Canada, 2011, English, 90 minutes

Amazon

Into the North

A group of Czech Jewish teenagers sets out on a journey to the North. Without their parents to look after them, they must rely on each other. That’s how their great adventure starts. They spend four years in Denmark, an oasis in the midst of raging WWII. More than seventy years later, they are ready to tell their story, a coming-of-age refugee story with a happy end, courtesy of thousands of openhearted Danes.

Director Natasha Dudinski, Documentary, Hebrew, Czech (with English subtitles), Israel, 2015, 89 minutes

Go2Films

It Happened in Saint-Tropez

Zef’s dear wife dies in an accident just as Roni, his wealthy brother, marries his daughter. When the widower arrives with the coffin containing his wife’s body right in the middle of the preparations for the wedding feast, he naturally casts a chill. The tensions between the two brothers who have diametrically opposed characters soon aggravate. All is a pretext for conflict, occupations, women, religion…

Director Danièle Thompson, Comedy, Romance, French, Italian (with English subtitles), France, 2013, 100 minutes

Amazon

Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown

Since the early days, Jerry Lewis – in the line of Chaplin, Keaton and Laurel – had the masses laughing with his visual gags, pantomime sketches and signature slapstick humor. Yet Lewis was far more than just a clown. He was also a groundbreaking filmmaker whose unquenchable curiosity led him to write, produce, stage and direct many of the films he appeared in.  By becoming a “total filmmaker,” Lewis surpassed expectations as a comic performer and emerged as a driving force in Hollywood. He broke boundaries with his technical innovations, unique voice and keen visual eye, even garnering respect and praise overseas.

Director Gregory Monro, France, USA, English, 60 minutes

Amazon

Keep Quiet

As vice-president of Hungary’s far-right extremist party, Csanad Szegedi espoused anti-Semitic rhetoric and Holocaust denials, and founded the Hungarian Guard, a now-banned militia inspired by a pro-Nazi group complicit in the murder of thousands of Jews during WWII. But his life was soon upended when Szegedi’s maternal grandparents were revealed to be Jewish and his beloved grandmother an Auschwitz survivor who had hidden her faith, fearing further persecution. Keep Quiet depicts Szegedi’s three-year journey to embrace his newfound religion. But is his transformation genuine? Or does he simply have nowhere else to turn?

Directors Sam Blair and Joseph Martin, Documentary, Hungarian (with English subtitles), UK, Hungary, 2016, 92 minutes

KinoNow

Keep the Change

When aspiring filmmaker David (Brandon Polansky) is mandated by a judge to attend a social program at the Jewish Community Center, he is sure of one thing: he doesn’t belong there. But when he’s assigned to visit the Brooklyn Bridge with the vivacious Sarah (Samantha Elisofon), sparks fly and his convictions are tested. Their budding relationship must weather Sarah’s romantic past, David’s judgmental mother (Jessica Walter), and their own pre-conceptions of what love is supposed to look like. Under the guise of an off-kilter New York romantic comedy, Keep the Change does something quite radical in casting actors with autism to play characters with autism, offering a refreshingly honest portrait of a community seldom depicted on the big screen. Rarely has a romcom felt so deep and poignant. Thoroughly charming and quite funny, the film’s warmth and candor brings growth and transformation to the characters, and ultimately, to us.

Director Rachel Israel, Romantic Comedy, English, USA, 2018, 85 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

King Bibi

20 years before the spectacle of Donald Trump’s presidency emerged, Benjamin Netanyahu already understood the political benefits of creating a toxic relationship with the media, and communicating directly with the public. ‘King Bibi’ explores Netanyahu’s rise to power, relying solely on archival footage of his media performances over the years: from his days as a popular guest expert on American TV, through his public confession of adultery, and his mastery of the art of social media. From one studio to another, “Bibi” evolved from Israel’s great political hope, to a controversial figure whom some perceive as Israel’s savior, and others – as a cynical politician who will stop at nothing to retain his power.

Directed by Dan Shadur
2018, Israel, Hebrew (with English subtitles), 87 minutes

Amazon

rafle

La Rafle

In picturesque Montmarte, three children wearing a yellow star play in the streets, oblivious to the darkness spreading over Nazi-occupied France. Their parents do not seem too concerned either, somehow putting their trust in the Vichy Government. But beyond this view, much is going on. Hitler demands that the French government round up its Jews and put them on trains for the extermination camps in the East. The collaborators start to put the plan into effect and within a short time, 13,000 of Paris’s Jews, among them 4,000 children, will be rounded up and sent on a road with no return.

Directed by Roselyne Bosch, France, 2012, French, German, Yiddish (with English subtitles), 124 minutes

Amazon

Lemon Tree

Salma Zidane, a widow, lives simply from her grove of lemon trees in the West Bank’s occupied territory. The Israeli defense minister and his wife move next door; the Secret Service orders the trees removed for security. The stoic Salma seeks assistance from the Palestinian Authority (useless), Israeli army (dismissive), and a young attorney, Ziad Daud, who takes the case; this older client attracts him. While the courts deliberate, the Israelis fence her trees and prohibit her from entering the grove. As the trees wither, the defense minister’s wife and, separately, an Israeli journalist, look on Salma with sympathy. In this allegory, does David stand a chance against Goliath?

Director Elan Riklis, 2008, Israel, Hebrew (with English subtitles), 104 minutes

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Leona

“Leona” is an intimate, insightful, and moving film that tells the story of a young Jewish woman from Mexico City who finds herself torn between her family and her forbidden love. Ripe with all the drama and interpersonal conflicts of a Jane Austen novel, watching her negotiate the labyrinth of familial pressure, religious precedent, and her own burgeoning sentiment is both painful and beautiful – there are no easy choices to be made and the viewer travels back and forth with her as she struggles with her heart to take the best path.

Director: Isaac Cherem
2018 Mexico, Spanish (with English subtitles), 95 minutes

 

Amazon Kanopy

let yourself go

Let Yourself Go

Elia (Toni Servillo, “The Great Beauty”) is a Jewish psychoanalyst from a purely Freudian school of thought. Due to his austere and detached manner, he is reputed for immediately generating awe in his patients. Elia lives alone in a flat on the same floor as his ex-wife Giovanna, with whom he is still secretly in love. After a minor illness, his doctor prescribes an iron-rich diet and physical activity to lose a few extra kilos. That is how he chances upon Claudia, a personal trainer with the cult of physique but clearly not of mind.

Directed by Francesco Amato, Italy, 2017, Italian (with English subtitles), Comedy, 112 minutes

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Life, Animated

Life, Animated is the inspirational story of Owen Suskind, a young man who was unable to speak as a child until he and his family discovered a unique way to communicate by immersing themselves in the world of classic Disney animated films. This emotional coming-of-age story follows Owen as he graduates to adulthood and takes his first steps toward independence. The subject of his father Ron Suskind’s New York Times bestseller, Owen was a thriving three-year-old who suddenly and inexplicably went silent – and for years after remained unable to connect with other people or to convey his thoughts, feelings or desires.  Over time, through repeated viewings of Disney classics like THE LITTLE MERMAID and THE LION KING, Owen found useful tools to help him to understand complex social cues and to re-connect with the world around him.

Director Roger Ross Williams, Documentary, English, USA, 2016, 91 minutes

Hoopla  Amazon

Little White Lie

What defines our identity, our family of origin or the family that raises us? How do we come to terms with the sins and mistakes of our parents? Little White Lie tells Lacey Schwartz’s story of growing up in a typical upper-middle-class Jewish household in Woodstock, NY, with loving parents and a strong sense of her Jewish identity — despite the open questions from those around her about how a white girl could have such dark skin. She believes her family’s explanation, but when her parents abruptly split, her gut starts to tell her something different.
 When her biological father dies shortly before Lacey’s 30th birthday, the family secret can stay hidden no longer. Lacey begins a quest to reconcile the hidden pieces of her life.

Director Lacey Schwartz, James Adolphus, Documentary, Biography, Drama, English, USA, 2014, 65 minutes

Amazon

Look at Us Now, Mother!

Look at Us Now, Mother! is about the transformation of a highly charged mother/daughter relationship from Mommie Dearest to Dear Mom, from hatred to love, as told through the filmmaker’s story. The film is an unflinching look at the complex bond between mother and daughter. Told through biting humor and raw honesty, this is an intimate story about family dysfunctions and forgiveness.

Director Gayle Kirschenbaum, English, USA, 2016, 83 minutes

Amazon

Love & Taxes

Love & Taxes is a riveting comic tale of seven years of tax avoidance. Following the possibly real-life exploits of Josh Kornbluth, an autobiographical monologist, Love & Taxes is a comedy that blends solo performance and scripted scenes to bring the subjective reality of the storyteller hilariously to life. A tale of procrastination, making movies and growing up, Love & Taxes is a middle-aged coming-of-age story that is also, quite possibly, the first ever pro-tax romantic comedy.

Director: Jacob Kornbluth
2015, USA, English, 90 minutes

Amazon  Tubi

Love, Gilda

In her own words, comedienne Gilda Radner looks back and reflects on her life and career. Weaving together recently discovered audiotapes, interviews with her friends, rare home movies and diaries read by modern day comediennes (including Amy Poehler), LOVE Gilda offers a unique window into the honest and whimsical world of a beloved performer whose greatest role was sharing her story.

Director, Lisa D’Apolito
2018, USA, English, 84 minutes

Amazon  YouTube

Memoir of War

Marguerite must navigate through the hardships of the Liberation after losing her husband and starting a relationship with the enemy during the War.

Director Emmanuel Finkiel
2018, Belgium, France, Switzerland, French (with English subtitles), 127 minutes

Amazon  Kanopy

Menashe

Within Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community, a widower battles for custody of his son. A tender drama performed entirely in Yiddish, the film intimately explores the nature of faith and the price of parenthood.

Director: Joshua Weinstein
2017, USA, English, 82 minutes

Amazon  YouTube

Monsieur Mayonnaise

Monsieur Mayonnaise is an artist’s epic adventure into his family’s secret past. Australian artist and filmmaker, Philippe Mora, investigates his father’s clandestine role in the French Résistance in WW2 and his mother’s miraculous escape enroute to Auschwitz. Philippe, a Hollywood cult-horror movie director and pop-artist, adopts a Film Noir persona to tell his family’s story. He also packs his paints and easel, as he embarks on a journey to create an audacious comic book about his parents, their survival, and the Holocaust. From LA to Berlin, Paris to Melbourne, Monsieur Mayonnaise is a richly layered, road movie starring artists, real life heroes, Nazi villains … and baguettes with lashings of tasty French mayonnaise!

Director Trevor Graham, Australia, Germany, France, USA, 2016, 95 minutes

Amazon

Moon in the 12th House

An engrossing psychological drama featuring two young sisters who are torn apart by the aftermath of a traumatic family secret. Packed with well-paced tension and with beautiful performances from the two lead actresses, the contrast between the raucous nightlife scene of Tel Aviv and the idyllic countryside home of the two girls creates an effective backdrop for this intriguing tale of simmering, unresolved tensions and damaged family life.

Director Dorit Hakim, Drama, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2016, 110 minutes

Amazon

kaplan

Mr. Kaplan

Jacob Kaplan lives an ordinary life in Uruguay. Like many of his other Jewish friends, Jacob fled Europe for South America because of World War II. But now turning 76, he’s become rather grumpy, fed up with his community and his family’s lack of interest in its own heritage. One beach bar may, however, provide him with an unexpected opportunity to achieve greatness and recover his family’s respect in the community: its owner, a quiet, elderly German, raises Mr. Kaplan suspicion of being a runaway Nazi.

Directed by Álvaro Brechner, Uruguay, Spain, Germany, 2014, Spanish (with English subtitles), 98 minutes

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My Australia

Poland, 1960’s. 10-year-old Tadek and his brother are part of an anti-Semitic gang. When they are arrested, their mother, a Holocaust survivor, has no choice but to reveal that though raised as Catholics, they are in fact Jews. Telling the younger boy they are going to Australia, the land of his fantasies, the family boards a ship to Israel. This tender and humorous drama is based on the filmmaker’s own experiences.

Director Ami Drozd, Feature, Hebrew, Polish (with English subtitles), Israel, Poland, 2011, 100 minutes

Go2Films

Netizens

This film delves into the lives of three women whose lives have been transformed by online harassment. Carrie Goldberg is an attorney in New York City, who launches an internet privacy and sexual assault law firm in the wake of her own cyber harassment. Tina Reine, in West Palm Beach, is a successful businesswoman whose career is derailed after an ex-boyfriend creates numerous reputation-harming websites. San Francisco-based Anita Sarkeesian is the creator of a popular web-series, “Feminist Frequency,” critiquing representations of women in video games, who is the target of a cyber-mob’s ongoing campaign of rape and death threats.

Through an intimate, vérité approach, NETIZENS depicts the many forms digital abuse can take: non-consensual pornography, cyber-stalking, threats of violence, privacy invasions, impersonation, character attacks. The film challenges the notion cyber harassment is “only” online, showing the repercussions on targets’ lives: lost jobs, thwarted educations, damaged reputations, offline harassment and stalking, and countless hours devoted to containing attacks against a backdrop of mounting legal fees and psychological distress.

While law enforcement lags behind the crimes, the film’s subjects seek justice on their own terms. Carrie’s law firm takes off in the midst of the #MeToo movement; Tina reclaims her identity by speaking out about her experiences; and Anita creates a new series about women written out of history. NETIZENS bears witness as a courageous wave of individuals transform the web as we know it.

Director: Cynthia Lowen
2018, USA, English, 96 minutes

Amazon

No Place on Earth

The remarkable true story of 38 men, women and children who slide down a cold, muddy hole in the ground, seeking refuge from the war. These five Ukrainian Jewish families created their own society, surviving underground longer than anyone in recorded history. After 511 days, they emerged in tattered clothes, blinded by a sun some children forgot existed. Despite all odds, they had survived.

Director Janet Tobias, Documentary, German, Yiddish (with English subtitles), UK, Germany, USA, 2013, 83 minutes

Amazon

once in a lifetime

Once in a Lifetime

A dedicated history teacher at a French high school, Anne Gueguen (Ariane Ascaride), is determined to give the best education she can to her underprivileged inner-city pupils. Overcoming their apathy, however, is proving to be more difficult than expected. Frustrated but undaunted, Anne tests her multicultural classroom with a unique assignment: a national competition on the theme of child victims of the Nazi concentration camps. The project is initially met with extreme resistance, until a face-to-face encounter with a Holocaust survivor changes the students’ attitudes dramatically. Once in A Lifetime demonstrates the enduring impact of the Holocaust in transforming future generations.

Directed by Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, France, 2016, Language: French, Drama, 105 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

Operation Wedding

Leningrad, 1970. A group of young Russian Jewish dissidents’ plots to hijack an empty plane and flee the USSR. Caught by the KGB, two of them were sentenced to death and the rest were sent to the Gulag forced-labor camp. 45 years later, filmmaker Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov reveals the compelling story of her parents, regarded as “heroes” in the West and “terrorists” in Russia.

Director Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov, Documentary, Hebrew, Russian (with English subtitles, Israel, Latvia, 2016, 63 minutes

Go2Films

Outback Rabbis

Synopsis: FRISCO KID meets PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT. On a road trip like no other ultra-Orthodox Chassidic Rabbis hit the Aussie bush looking for ‘lost Jews’. Leaving the comfort of Melbourne Jewish life, two Rabbis and their families are heading into the heart of Australia on a journey filled with surprising and emotional encounters with Aussie outback characters and laced with Jewish wit, music and culture.

Director Danny Ben-Moshe, Documentary, Australia, 2019, 52 minutes.

Amazon

Outdoors

Gili and Yaara decide to leave the city and have a fresh start, building a house in the countryside of the Galilee. But while their dream house is being built, the foundations of their relationship slowly collapse.

Director Asaf Saban, Feature, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2017, 80 minutes

Go2Films

Praise the Lard

Pork. It’s the Jewish religion’s biggest taboo and one of Israel’s most controversial issues. Told in a humorous tone, Praise the Lard follows the quirky story of how a simple farm animal became a symbol of freedom for secular Israelis and an existential threat to the religious.

Director Chen Shelach, Documentary, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2017, 60 minutes

Go2Films

Projections of America

Academy Award-winning screenwriter Robert Riskin headed up a secret film unit that sought to redefine America in the eyes of the world during the darkest days of World War II. The filmmakers created powerful short documentaries that showed America’s strength not through images of tanks, but in portraits of farmers, school children and window washers. The “Projections of America” films were brilliant, moving portraits of America that were unlike any films ever made before, but seventy years later they are forgotten, hidden away in government archives. Narrated by John Lithgow, PROJECTIONS OF AMERICA tells the dramatic story of Riskin and his team, and the risks they took to project a profoundly democratic vision of the nation that would soon emerge as the most powerful on earth.

Director Peter Miller, Documentary, German, French (with English subtitles), Germany, USA, France, 2015, 52 minutes

Amazon

RBG

At the age of 85, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has developed a lengthy legal legacy while becoming an unexpected pop culture icon. But the unique personal journey of her rise to the nation’s highest court has been largely unknown, even to some of her biggest fans – until now. RBG explores Ginsburg’s life and career.

Directors: Julie Cohen, Betsy West
2018, USA, English, 97 minutes

Amazon  Kanopy

rabin

Rabin In His Own Words

Rabin In His Own Words is an “autobiography” of sorts, the story is told entirely in Rabin’s own voice. Through a combination of rare archival footage, home movies and private letters, his personal and professional dramas unfold before the viewer’s eyes – from his childhood as the son of a labor leader before the founding of the State of Israel, through a change of viewpoint that turned him from a farmer into an army man who stood at some of the most critical junctures in Israeli history, through his later years during which he served as Prime Minister and made moves that enraged a large portion of the public, until the horrific moment when his political career and life were suddenly brought to an end.

Directed by Erez Laufer, Israel, 2016, Hebrew, Documentary, 100 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

Red Leaves

Meseganio Tadela is an obstinate man. He immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia with his family 28 years ago and chose to zealously retain his Ethiopian culture. He belongs to a rapidly disappearing generation. Tadela sets out on a journey through his children’s homes after losing his wife. Coming to know some of life’s harsh new realities, he tries to survive in his own way.

Director Bazzi Gete, Feature, Hebrew, Amharic (with English subtitles), Israel, 2014, 80 minutes

Go2Films

Red Penguins

Red Penguins tells a story of capitalism and opportunism run amok – complete with gangsters, strippers and live bears serving beer on a hockey rink in Moscow. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the famed Red Army hockey team formed a joint venture that showed anything was possible in the new Russia. Eccentric marketing whiz, Steve Warshaw, is sent to Russia and tasked to transform team into the greatest show in Moscow. He takes the viewer on a bizarre journey highlighting a pivotal moment in U.S. Russian relations in a lawless era when oligarchs made their fortunes and multiple murders went unsolved.

Director Gabe Polsky, 2019, Germany, Russia, USA, English, Russian (with English subtitles), 80 minutes

Amazon

Remember

A masterwork of suspense starring Academy Award winners Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau, who set out to complete a secret mission some seventy years in the making. Every time Zev (Christopher Plummer) wakes, he calls out his wife’s name, only to be reminded that she has died. Zev suffers from memory loss and has been forgetting more and more of late. That is why Max (Martin Landau) has scrupulously written down instructions for every step of the journey Zev has agreed to take, a journey that will take Zev to various cities across the US and Canada in search of a mysterious man named Rudy Kolander. With a pacing and intensity that will keep you riveted, this powerful road movie becomes a tour of small towns and cities that harbor dark secrets, places where it is remarkably easy for the flames of hate to stay alight—or for men to find redemption.

Director: Atom Egoyan, 2015, Canada, Germany, 95 minutes

Amazon  iTunes

Remember Baghdad

Remember Baghdad reveals the untold story of Iraq, told through the eyes of the Jews, Iraq’s first wave of refugees. After 2,600 years living peacefully in the area, in one generation the community vanishes. using vivid testimony, home movies and news archive, we follow the lives of four families trying to make sense of turbulent times.

Director(s)Fiona Murphy, Documentary, Hebrew, Arabic (with English subtitles), Great Britain, 2017, 69 minutes

Go2Films

restoration

Restoration

A triangle of fatherhood ties, a triangle of love. 70-year-old Yaakov Fidelman (Sasson Gabai, The Band’s Visit) hangs on with all his might to the antique restoration workshop which has been his life’s work. After his long-time business partner passes away, Fidelman rejects his son Noah’s idea to close the business and build an apartment complex on the site.  He believes that with the help of his new apprentice Anton, he’ll find a way to save his workshop, his world and his solitary way of life.

Directed by Joseph Madmoney, Israel, 2012, Hebrew (with English subtitles), 105 minutes

Amazon

Restoring Tomorrow

In these divided times, religious institutions are losing young members and even closing their doors at an alarming rate. This film is the beautiful true story of hope as a treasured local temple near demise, is lifted up by a community’s determination to achieve the impossible.

Director Aaron Wolf, Documentary, English, USA, 2016, 78 minutes

Amazon

run boy run

Run Boy Run

A superlative saga of courage and compassion, Run Boy Run tells the extraordinary true story of a young Polish boy’s struggle to outlast the Nazi occupation and maintain his Jewish faith through his intrepid will and the kindness of others. Escaping the Warsaw ghetto at the behest of his father, nine-year old Srulik (movingly portrayed by twins Andrzej and Kamil Tkacz) flees to the woods. There, he learns to hide from SS patrols and scour for food, until loneliness and the harsh onset of winter drive him back to civilization. An unforgettable cinematic experience featuring exceptional performances, arresting cinematography and a transcendent musical score, Run Boy Run is directed by Oscar-winner Pepe Danquart and based on the bestselling novel by Israeli author Uri Orlev.

Directed by Pepe Danquart, Germany, 2014, Polish, German, Russian, Yiddish (wish English subtitles), Drama, 107 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

Saving the Hermans

The Hermans with their three children set off on an adventurous trip from Thailand to Laos, Cambodia, China, Kazakhstan and from there along the Silk Road to Cyprus. Their journey is a fulfillment of a dream and a chance to save their marriage. They fight and quarrel, laugh and cry. They meet exotic cultures, pass through breathtaking landscapes and experience hair-raising adventures; they hate, and they love. Will they find out what’s the meaning of home and family?

Director Gilad Goldschmidt, Documentary, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2017, 86 minutes

Go2Films

Seed: The Untold Story

Few things on Earth are as miraculous and vital as seeds. Worshipped and treasured since the dawn of humankind. SEED: The Untold Story follows passionate seed keepers protecting our 12,000 year-old food legacy. In the last century, 94% of our seed varieties have disappeared. As biotech chemical companies control the majority of our seeds, farmers, scientists, lawyers, and indigenous seed keepers fight a David and Goliath battle to defend the future of our food. In a harrowing and heartening story, these reluctant heroes rekindle a lost connection to our most treasured resource and revive a culture connected to seeds.

Directors Taggart Siegel, Jon Betz, Documentary, English, USA, 2016, 94 minutes

Amazon

Shalom Berlin

Berlin criminal investigator Sara Stein cultivates a low-key style. No superwoman, she abhors violence and relies on her gift for convincing others that she’s trustworthy. Above all, she enjoys working in Berlin and Tel Aviv. Her being Jewish is a major asset, since she can navigate sure-footedly through the morass of explosive and impenetrable conflicts among Jews, Arabs and Palestinians.

Director: Matthias Tiefenbacher, 2016, Germany, German (with English subtitles), 88 minutes

Amazon  iTunes

bollywood

Shalom Bollywood

A celebration of the all-singing, all-dancing history of the world’s largest film industry, Shalom Bollywood reveals the unlikely story of the 2000-year-old Indian Jewish community and its formative place in shaping the world’s largest film industry. At the advent of the Indian cinema industry, it was taboo for Hindu and Islamic women to perform on-screen. Indian Jewish women took upon the female lead roles and continued to do so for decades. Using stage names, the women weren’t obviously identified as Jewish, and were commonly thought to be Christian or Muslim.

Directed by Danny Ben-Moshe, Australia, 2018, English, Documentary, 85 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

 

Q&A

On June 11, we had a Q&A about the film. View a recording of the event here.

Shalom Italia

Three Italian Jewish brothers set off on a journey through Tuscany in search of a cave in which they hid as children to escape the Nazis. Their quest, full of humor, food and Tuscan landscapes, straddles the boundary between history and myth, the result of which is a profound portrait of memory and history.

Director Tamar Tal Anati, Documentary, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2016, 70 minutes

Go2Films

Shoelaces

“Shoelaces” tells the story of a complicated relationship between an aging father and his special-needs son, whom he abandoned while he was still a young boy. Reuben’s (60) kidney’s are failing and his son Gadi (35), wants to donate one of his own kidney’s to help save his father’s life. However, the transplant committee objects to the procedure claiming that Rueben, acting as Gadi’s sole legal guardian, does not have the right to authorize such an invasive procedure. Gadi, who recently lost his mother, is afraid of losing his father as well. He feels he finally has the chance to do something meaningful; to become a man and stand on his own. He’s furious with the committee’s decision and sets out to fight for his right to save his father’s life. Through the film’s portrayal of a relationship full of love, rejection and co-dependency, it manages to shed some light and question the importance of human life, human connection and if life is even possible without it either one of them.

Directed by Jacob Goldwasser, Drama, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2018, 90 minutes

Amazon  iTunes

 

Q&A

On July 6, we had a Q&A about the film. View a recording of the event here.

Silicon Wadi

Four Israeli startup teams sacrifice their families, their friends, and their bank accounts to pursue their startup dreams. Throughout their journey, we catch an intimate and exciting glance on how the ‘High-Tech Nation’ really works.

Directors Daniel Sivan, Yossi Bloch, Documentary, Hebrew (with English subtitles) Israel, US, 2014, 82 minutes

Go2Films

Simon & Théodore

Simon is about to become a father. But how can this unusual young man take care of his baby when he can’t take care of himself? His encounter with Théodore, an endearing and cantankerous teen raised by his single mom, will seriously upend his… uncertainties. During a single night, while Simon’s wife and Théodore’s mother will form a common front, the two rebels set out on a crazy quest… toward accepting themselves.

Director: Mikael Buch
France, 2018, French (with English subtitles), 84 minutes

Kanopy Tubi

 

Son of Saul

October 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Saul Ausländer is a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners isolated from the camp and forced to assist the Nazis in the machinery of large-scale extermination. While working in one of the crematoriums, Saul discovers the body of a boy he takes for his son. As the Sonderkommando plans a rebellion, Saul decides to carry out an impossible task: save the child’s body from the flames, find a rabbi to recite the mourner’s Kaddish and offer the boy a proper burial.

Director: László Nemes
2015, Hungary, Hungarian (with English subtitles), 107 minutes

Amazon  YouTube

Song of Names

A child befriends a Polish violin prodigy whose parents leave him in his family’s care. The two boys become like brothers until the musician disappears. Forty years later, he gets his first clue as to what happened to his childhood best friend.

Director François Girard, 2019, Canada, Hungary, UK, Germany, 113 minutes

Amazon  iTunes

Stand!

1919. Stefan and his father Mike fled Ukraine for the New World, where they struggle to earn enough to re-unite the family. Stefan is instantly smitten with the Jewish suffragette neighbour, Rebecca – but Rebecca’s brother Moishe and Mike oppose the would-be Romeo and Juliet. Returned soldiers, angry at the lack of jobs after the war, violently threaten the city’s immigrants, including Emma, the refugee from racist violence in Oklahoma. When a movement develops for workers to leave their jobs in protest, AJ Anderson, a wealthy lawyer, pits all against each other in a dramatic and inspirational final stand.

Director: Robert Adetuyi
2019, Canada, English, 110 minutes

Amazon  Google Play  YouTube

Standing Up, Falling Down

In the refreshingly original Standing Up, Falling Down, Crystal plays decidedly against type. Set in the present day, the film centers around an aspiring comedian named Scott, played charmingly by rising-star comedian Ben Schwartz (Parks and Recreation). Having failed to launch in Los Angeles, Scott has reluctantly moved back in with his parents in Long Island. Well into his 30s, he struggles to reconnect with childhood friends who have moved into adulthood without him. Feeling abandoned and lonely, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with Marty, his much older dermatologist, played by Crystal.

Director Matt Ratner, Comedy, Family, English, USA, 2019, 91 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

matzo

Streit’s: Matzo and the American Dream

For more than 90 years, the Streit’s matzo factory sat in a low-slung tenement building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. While other matzo companies modernized, Streit’s remained a piece of living history, churning out 40 percent of the nation’s unleavened bread on pre-War machinery as old as the factory itself. In a neighborhood where the Jewish immigrants long ago moved on, in a nation where progress and profits trump all else, where manufacturing has left the cities if not the country, where family businesses are bought out by giant corporations and workers move from job to low paying job, filmmaker Michael Levine captures the Streit’s saga and echoes the American Dream.

Directed by Michael Levine, USA, 2016, English, Documentary, 83 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

Surviving Skokie

The relationship between father (Jack) and son deepens as they return to Poland, where Eli learns more about the extended family that perished during the Shoah. Together they retrace the painful and debilitating journey through two ghettos and two concentration camps.

Directors Blair Gershkow and Eli Adler, Documentary, English, USA, 2015, 66 minutes

Amazon

 

Q&A

On April 22, we had a Q&A about the film. View a recording of the event here.

That Bites!

I’m 12 years old, and I have spent the last 12 + months working on a film to educate people about what it’s like to have life threatening food allergies. I offer the unique perspective of a child and most of my interviewees are also kids. Eating is enjoyed by everyone, but for 8% of the earth’s population, it can be an inescapable nightmare. The food allergy epidemic is quickly rising and hundreds of people a year are dying from food allergies. If you suffer from a food allergy, you literally put your life into the hands of hosts, waiters, caregivers, friends and family everyday. The movie explores why having food allergies can be scary, intimidating, isolating, embarrassing, frightening, confusing, annoying, and of course, frustrating.

Director Jack Graydon Yonover, Documentary, English, USA, 2015,  45 minutes

YouTube

 

Q&A

On May 5, we had a Q&A about the film. View a recording of the event here.

art dealer

The Art Dealer

This new drama from renowned French director François Margolin (The Flight of the Red Balloon) follows a Jewish woman who embarks on a journey to recover family paintings stolen by the Nazis. During her investigation, she discovers some family secrets are best kept hidden. Anna Sigalevitch, best known for her work in The Piano Teacher, Flight of the Red Balloon and Belle Epíne, gives another captivating performance as a desperate woman searching for the truth in a past shrouded in mystery. Completing this stellar French cast are François Berléand (The Transporter series), Louis-Do de Lencquesaing (Father of My Children, 2009) and Michel Bouquet (Renoir, 2012).

Directed by François Margolin, France, 2015, French (with English subtitles), 95 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

The Cakemaker

Thomas, a German baker, is having an affair with Oren, an Israeli married man who has frequent business visits in Berlin. When Oren dies, Thomas travels to Jerusalem seeking answers. Under a fabricated identity, Thomas infiltrates the life of Anat, his lover’s newly widowed wife. Thomas finds himself involved in Anat’s life in a way far beyond his anticipation, and to protect the truth he will stretch his lie to a point of no return.

Director Ofir Raul Graizer, Drama, Hebrew, German (with English subtitles), Israel, Germany, 2017, 105 minutes

Amazon

The Dancing Dogs of Dombrova

On a cold winter night, estranged siblings Sarah and Aaron Cotler arrive at an empty train station in Dombrova, Poland. With their only available ride being a silent Driver, they embark on a quest to fulfil their dying grandmother’s wish – find, dig up, and bring home the bones of her favourite childhood dog, Peter.

Director: Zack Bernbaum
2018, Canada, English, 102 minutes

Film Movement Plus Tubi

The Driver is Red

Set in Argentina, 1960, this true crime documentary follows the story of secret agent Zvi Aharoni as he hunts down one of the highest-ranking Nazi war criminals, Adolf Eichmann.

Director: Randall Christopher
2017, English, USA, 15 minutes

YouTube

The Exception

In his film debut, Tony-nominated theater director David Leveaux assembles an all-star cast for this WWII period piece about a German soldier who must make the ultimate choice between honoring his country and following his heart. Nazi captain Stefan Brandt (Jai Courtney) is sent on a mission to the palatial estate of exiled German Monarch Kaiser Wilhelm II (Christopher Plummer). Searching for a suspected British spy lurking among the staff, Brandt finds himself drawn into a clandestine romance with one of the Kaiser’s chambermaids, Mieke (Lily James), who harbors a secret identity.

Director David Leveaux, Drama, English, UK, USA, 2017, 107 minutes

Amazon

The Guys Next Door

Meet Erik and Sandro, a gay married couple whose friend, Rachel, is a surrogate for their two daughters. Rachel, who is in her 40s, is married to Tony and they have three children. Together, they form a unique extended family. Elegantly shot and edited, and told with candor and humor, this an inspiring story of family, friendship and gay rights.

Directors Amy Geller, Allie Humenuk, Documentary, LGBTQ, English, USA, Italy, 2016, 74 minutes

Amazon

The Homestretch

The Homestretch follows three homeless teens as they fight to stay in school, graduate, and build a future. Each of these smart, ambitious teenagers – Roque, Kasey and Anthony – will surprise, inspire, and challenge audiences to rethink stereotypes of homelessness as they work to complete their education while facing the trauma of being alone and abandoned at an early age. Mild language.

Director/Producer: Danny Dewes, Documentary, USA, 2014, 90 minutes

Tubi

The Hunting Ground

From the makers of The Invisible War (2012) comes a startling exposé of rape crimes on U.S. college campuses, their institutional cover-ups and the devastating toll they take on students and their families. Weaving together verité footage and first-person testimonies, the film follows the lives of several undergraduate assault survivors as they attempt to pursue – despite incredible push back, harassment, and traumatic aftermath – both their education and justice.

Director Kirby Dick, Documentary, USA, 2016, 103 minutes

Amazon

The Impure

A dark story which took place in Argentina in the early 20th century. The “Impure” was how the Argentinian Jewish pimps were called by the “normal” Jewish community. They were vicious organization leaders and brothel owners who practiced religious lives while trafficking thousands of unfortunate Eastern-European Jewish women. One of them was the director’s relative.

Director Daniel Najenson, Documentary, Hebrew, Spanish, Yiddish (with English subtitles), Israel, Argentina, 2017, 69 minutes

Go2Films

interpreter

The Interpreter

An 80-year-old translator, Ali Ungár, comes across a book written by a former SS officer recounting his war experiences in Slovakia. Ali realizes that one of the chapters may well describe his own parents’ execution. And so, armed with a pistol, he sets off to Vienna to look for the SS man and take his revenge. But once there, the only person he encounters is the man’s 70-year-old son Georg, a former teacher who has spent his whole life avoiding his father and suffering from an addiction to alcohol.  Oscillating between comedy and tragedy, Martin Šulík’s road movie focuses on two old men weighed down by the unresolved conflicts that have plagued their lives who are now trying to free themselves from this oppressive burden.

Directed by Martin Šulík, Slovak Republic/Czech Republic Austria, 2018, Drama/Comedy, German/Slovakian (with English subtitles), 114 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

The Invisibles

The Invisibles is a harrowing documentary that sheds light on a little-known aspect of history — the thousands of Jewish men, women and children who lived in hiding in Berlin even after the Nazis declared the city “free of Jews.” In 1943, there were 7,000 Jewish men, women and children still living in the Nazi capital: hiding in attics, basements, and warehouses, protected by courageous Berliners while desperately trying to avoid deportation. Only 1,700 lived to liberation. The Invisibles tells the stories of four survivors, interweaving their testimony with highly accomplished dramatizations, a unique hybrid approach that brings edge-of-the-seat suspense to their years spent underground. The two men and two women whose stories unfold are well chosen, and their younger selves are sensitively portrayed: Cioma is an art student who uses his drafting skills to forge passports in exchange for food ration cards; Hanni dyes her hair blond and tries to pass as Aryan; teenager Eugen is handed to a succession of sympathetic Communist families; and Ruth must resort to roaming the streets before being taken in by a surprising protector. All of them are invisibles, living on their own illegally and forced to make decisions every day that could mean the difference between life and death. Unlike any other movie before it, The Invisibles is a unique historical testimonial to these individuals and their brave resistance to evil.

Director Claus Räfle. Germany, 2017, German (with English subtitles), 110 minutes

Amazon   iTunes

The Last Goldfish

The Last Goldfish documents a daughter’s search for her lost family. Rich with archival images, this suspenseful and surprising story – stretching from Australia to rinidad, North America to WWII Germany – reveals the impact of war and displacement across generations. Manfred Goldfish tries as hard as he can to hide the trauma he has experienced. But his filmmaker daughter suspects there is more to the Goldfish tale than her father is willing to reveal. A gripping and deeply moving story of one person’s search for the story of her life.

Director Su Goldfish, Australia, 2018, 81 minutes

YouTube

The Last Laugh

In the outrageously funny and brilliantly thoughtful film, The Last Laugh, Ferne Pearlstein (producer of MJFF 2016 One More Time) weaves together interviews with comedic giants like Mel Brooks, Joan Rivers, Carl Reiner, Gilbert Gottfried, Judy Gold, Jake Ehrenreich, Susie Essman, Larry Charles, Etgar Keret, and Sarah Silverman, as well as conversations with Holocaust survivors who talk about the importance of laughter. Pearlstein invites the viewer on a journey across a comedic landscape marked by speed bumps, caution signs, and potholes big enough to swallow a clown car. Star-studded, provocative, and thoroughly entertaining, The Last Laugh will leave you laughing and appreciating the importance of humor even in the face of events that make you want to cry.

Director Ferne Pearlstein, 2016, US, 89 minutes

Amazon

light of hope

The Light of Hope

In the early 1940’s, refugees from all over Europe seek shelter in South Western France, escaping persecution from the Nazis and from Franco’s regime in Spain. Among them, there are countless women, some of them pregnant, and their little children. The camps are in horrendous shape with refugees holding out with no protection from the cold. With no further ado, young Red Cross nurse Elisabeth Eidenbenz breathes new life into an old villa. By transforming it into a birth clinic she saves the lives of mothers and children from certain death. Despite all hardship, the villa becomes a safe haven resounding with the children’s laughter. But soon threats from without and within take shape: Authorities in Nazi-occupied France demand that she hand over all Jewish refugees and their children, while Elisabeth’s deputy Victoria sides with the Résistance partisans – a worthy cause but one that puts at stake the lives of everyone in the maternity.

Directed by Silvia Quer, Spain, 2018, Drama, Spanish, Catalan, French (with English subtitles), 96 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

The Keeper

The Keeper tells the incredible true story of Bert Trautmann (David Kross, The Reader), a German soldier and prisoner of war who, against a backdrop of British post-war protest and prejudice, secures the position of Goalkeeper at Manchester City, and in doing so becomes a footballing icon. His signing causes outrage to thousands of fans, many of them Jewish. But Bert receives support from an unexpected direction: Rabbi Alexander Altmann, who fled the Nazis. Bert’s love for Margaret (Freya Mavor), an Englishwoman, carries him through and he wins over even his harshest opponents by winning the 1956 FA Cup Final, playing on with a broken neck to secure victory. But fate will soon twist the knife for Bert and Margaret, when their love and loyalty to each other is put to the ultimate test.

Director: Marcus H. Rosenmüller
2019, United Kingdom, English, 113 minutes RATED R

Amazon  YouTube

matchmaker

The Matchmaker

Arik, a teenage boy growing up in Haifa in 1968, gets a job working for Yankele Bride, a matchmaker. Yankele, a mysterious Holocaust survivor, has an office in back of a movie theater that shows only love stories, run by a family of seven Romanian dwarves in the seedy area by the port. Yankele introduces Arik to a new world, built on the ruins of an old one. As Arik begins to learn the mysteries of the human heart through his work with Yankele, he falls in love with Tamara, his friend Beni’s cousin. Tamara has just returned from America and is full of talk of women’s rights, free love and rock and roll. The disparate parts of Arik’s life collide in unexpected, often funny and very moving ways as he lives through a summer that changes him forever.

Directed by Avi Nesher, Israel, 2012, Hebrew (with English subtitles), 112 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

The Museum

This is a documentary puzzle, simultaneously intriguing and amusing, which attempts to define the unique essence of the museum within the exceptional geographical, historical and political context in which it functions.

With a trenchant, ironic eye the film follows the visitors, observes the observers, listens to the speakers and descends to the storerooms, labs and conference rooms. The American museum director, the singing security guard, the Jerusalemite curator, the Haredi kashrut inspector, the Palestinian guide and the blind visitor are just a few of the characters that take part in a chain of activities which add up to the museum.

The fears, the nightmares, the endless sense of sacrifice which is such a powerful part of the Israeli and Jewish experience are reflected in the museum’s daily existence. From slavery in Pharaonic Egypt through Emperor Hadrian of Rome to Nazism, they’re all here with us, all the time, molding the present as if they were living among us here and now.

For about 18 months director Ran Tal collected footage of the museum’s daily routine, assembling it into a cinematic collage – observant, sensitive and breathtakingly beautiful.

Directed by Ran Tal
2017, Israel, Hebrew, English (with English subtitles), 74 minutes

Kanopy Tubi

sophie tucker

The Outrageous Sophie Tucker

The rags to riches story of Sophie Tucker, an iconic superstar who ruled the worlds of vaudeville, Broadway, radio, television, and Hollywood throughout the 20th century.  Before Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Bette Midler, Marilyn Monroe, and Mae West, Sophie Tucker was the first woman to infatuate her audiences with a bold, bawdy and brassy style unlike any other. Using all of “The Last of the Red Hot Mamas” 400-plus recently rediscovered personal scrapbooks, authors Susan and Lloyd Ecker take you on their seven-year journey retracing Tucker’s sixty-year career in show business.

Directed by William Gazecki, USA, Documentary, 2015, English, 96 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

The Other Story

Strong female protagonists have been the mainstay of many Avi Nesher films. In “The Other Story”, two rebellious young women – one fleeing the chaos of secular hedonism for the disciplined comforts of faith; the other desperate to transcend her oppressive religious upbringing for sexual and spiritual freedom – cross paths unexpectedly in Jerusalem, to startling consequences.

Director Avi Nesher, Drama, International, Suspense, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2019, 117 minutes

Amazon

The People vs. Fritz Bauer

The story of a man’s determination to bring Adolf Eichmann, a former high-ranking SS-Nazi officer, to trial in Germany, and the opposition he faced. Fritz Bauer was a district attorney in Hesse, and the story really begins towards the end of his life. At the beginning he is shown drowning in his bathtub, but he is saved in time. In reality, he died in 1968.

Director: Lars Kraume
2015, Germany, English, German, Yiddish (with English subtitles), 105 minutes

Amazon  Kanopy

The Pickle Recipe

Joey is the undisputed king of Detroit party MC’s for the wedding and bar mitzvah circuit. He’s also a single father and deeply in debt. When all of his sound equipment gets destroyed in a freak accident, he’s forced to get creative and enter into some shady business to get back on his feet. To add insult to injury, his daughter Julie’s Bat-Mitzvah is only weeks away and she’s counting on him to MC her party. After exhausting all of his options, he turns to his shady Uncle Morty (Oscar nominee David Paymer), who agrees to give him the needed money to get back into business. But only under one condition. Joey must steal his grandmother Rose’s most prized possession: her famous top-secret dill pickle recipe. Rose (played by “Sex and the City” and “Hunger Games: Cathing Fire” star Lynn Cohen) guards the recipe with her life and has vowed to take it to her grave.

Director Michael Manasseri, Comedy, English, USA, 2016, 97 minutes

Amazon

The Rape of Europa

The Rape of Europa is an epic journey through seven countries, into the violent whirlwind of fanaticism, greed, and warfare that threatened to wipe out the artistic heritage of Europe. For twelve long years, the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in history. But heroic young art historians and curators from America and across Europe fought back with a miraculous campaign to rescue and return the millions of lost, hidden and stolen treasures.

Directed by Richard Berge, Nicole Newnham, Bonni Cohen, USA, 2006, English, 117 minutes

iTunes  Amazon

The Second Time Around

Love is lovelier the second time around. Katherine Mitchell didn’t think she would fall in love again after the death of husband, certainly not with someone as abrasive and grumpy as Isaac Shapiro. But after breaking her hip and convalescing in a retirement residence, against her will, she soon discovers that Polish tailor Isaac shares her passion for music and the happiness it brings. Heartwarming and thoroughly romantic, The Second Time Around shows it is never too late to fall in love and start over. Starring two-time Emmy Award-winning actor Stuart Margolin.

Director Leon Marr, 2016, Canada, 107 minutes

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The Sign for Love

When El-Ad was a child, his mother told him: “Raising you is like raising three kids.” Ever since that moment, he felt guilty for being deaf, and tried extra hard to be like everyone else. He became even more alienated after the tragic death of his mother and the breakdown of his family. El-Ad later started a family of his own, becoming a father through a shared parenting arrangement with his friend Yaeli, who’s also deaf, surrounded by their deaf friends. The film is his first-person account of the life he created for himself, and his attempt to show viewers his version of family and parenthood.

Directors Elad Cohen, Iris Ben Moshe, Documentary, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2017, 75 minutes

Go2Films

The Sturgeon Queens

Four generations of a Jewish immigrant family create Russ and Daughters, a Lower East Side lox and herring emporium that survives and thrives. Produced to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the store, this documentary features an extensive interview with two of the original daughters for whom the store was named, now 100 and 92 years old, and interviews with prominent enthusiasts of the store including Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, chef Mario Batali, New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin, and 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer. Rather than a conventional narrator, the filmmakers bring together six colorful longtime fans of the store, in their 80s and 90s, who sit around a table of fish reading the script in the style of a Passover Seder.

Director Julie Cohen, Documentary, Comedy, Family, English, USA, 2014, 52 minutes

Amazon   Kanopy

Kanopy requires a valid public library card and registration is required to view this film.

The Tenth Man

After years away, Ariel returns to Buenos Aires seeking to reconnect with his father Usher, who has founded a charity foundation in Once, the city’s bustling Jewish district where Ariel spent his youth. In the process of trying to meet his father and getting entangled in his charitable commitments, Ariel also reconnects with his own Jewish roots. Usher staves off a meeting with his son; roping him into a number of small assignments, during the course of which Ariel meets Eva, who volunteers for Usher’s charity. Eva’s radiant inner strength and independent spirit inspires Ariel to come to grips with the the traditions that once divided him and his father and rethink his own identity. Tenderly, and with a lightness of touch, he has Ariel let go of his old expectations and allow himself to be drawn into the center of a vibrant and fascinating community.

Director Daniel Burman, Family, Drama, Spanish (with English subtitles), Argentina, 2016, 80 minutes

KinoNow

testament

The Testament

Yoel, a meticulous historian leading a significant debate against holocaust deniers, discovers that his mother carries a false identity. A mystery about a man who is willing to risk everything to discover the truth.

A Film by Amichai Greenberg, Israel, 2017, Hebrew, German (with English subtitles), Drama, 96 minutes

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waldheim

The Waldheim Waltz

A film about truth and lies and how a dishonest man can rise to power.

Ruth Beckermann documents the process of uncovering former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim’s wartime past. It shows the swift succession of new allegations by the World Jewish Congress during his Austrian presidential campaign, the denial by the Austrian political class, the outbreak of anti-Semitism and patriotism, which finally led to his election. Created from international archive material and what Beckermann shot at the time, the film shows that history repeats itself time and time again.

Austria, 2018, Documentary, German, French and English (with English subtitles), 94 minutes

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women's balcony

The Women’s Balcony

An accident during a bar mitzvah celebration leads to a gender rift in a devout Orthodox community in Jerusalem, in this rousing, good-hearted tale about women speaking truth to patriarchal power.  When the women’s balcony in an Orthodox synagogue collapses, leaving the rabbi’s wife in a coma and the rabbi in shock, the congregation falls into crisis. Charismatic young Rabbi David appears to be a savior after the accident, but slowly starts pushing his fundamentalist ways and tries to take control. This tests the women’s friendships and creates an almost Lysistrata-type rift between the community’s women and men.

A Film by Shlomit Nehama and Emil Ben-Shimon, Israel, 2016, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Comedy, Drama, 96 minutes

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Q&A

On May 18, we had a Q&A about the film. View a recording of the event here.

The Wonderful Kingdom of Papa Alaev

A modern-day Shakespearean tale about a legendary Tajik-Israeli musical family controlled by the charismatic patriarch Papa Alaev. Only his equally strong-willed daughter, Ada, dares to resist his will. As Papa nears 80 and generations clash over new musical directions, the family show must go on. But who will lead the band?

Directors Tal Barda and Noam Pinchas, Documentary, Hebrew, Russian, Tajiki (with English subtitles), Israel, France, 2016, 74 minutes

Go2Films

zigzag kid

The Zigzag Kid

In this spirited and action-packed adventure young Nono, a nearly 13 year old dreamer, longs to be a detective like his father, the famous police inspector; but his wild nature constantly gets him into trouble. Fed up with Nono’s fantasies and antics, his father sends him off to his uncle’s. On the train, the very imaginative Nono discovers one last chance to prove himself.  He meets the charming international thief Felix Glick, an old acquaintance of his father’s, with whom he travels to the French Rivera and enters a world of intrigue and pursuits, crossing paths with the famous singer Lola Ciperola (Isabella Rossellini) and the mysterious Zohara whose secrets will change his life forever. Based on the beloved novel by David Grossman, The Zigzag Kid appeals to adults and children alike through its wit and humor.

Directed by Vincent Bal, Belgium, Netherlands, 2015, Dutch, English, French, 95 minutes

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The Zookeeper’s Wife

In 1939 Poland, Antonina Żabińska (portrayed by two-time Academy Award nominee Jessica Chastain) and her husband, Dr. Jan Żabiński (Johan Heldenbergh, a European Film Award nominee for the Academy Award-nominated The Broken Circle Breakdown), have the Warsaw Zoo flourishing under his stewardship and her care. When their country is invaded by the Germans, Jan and Antonina are stunned and forced to report to the Reich’s newly appointed chief zoologist, Lutz Heck (Golden Globe Award nominee Daniel Brühl of Captain America: Civil War). To fight back on their own terms, the Żabińskis covertly begin working with the Resistance and put into action plans to save lives out of what has become the Warsaw Ghetto, with Antonina putting herself and even her children at great risk.

Director Nick Caro, Biography, Drama, History, German, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Czech Republic, UK, USA, 2017, 127 minutes

Amazon

to life

To Life!

Fate introduces the aging cabaret singer Ruth (played by Hannelore Elsner, the Grande Dame of German cinema) and the confused Jonas (dashing German actor Max Riemelt). Ruth is running from her past and Jonas from his future but the two of them together manage to reaffirm life for each other in this moving drama.

Directed by Uwe Janson, Germany, 2016, German (with English subtitles), Drama, 86 minutes

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Toman

This fascinating historical drama looks at the life of “the Czech Schindler,” Zdenek Toman, a controversial figure who was an unsavory politician and dubious entrepreneur, but also the savior of hundreds of European Jews.

Director Ondrej Trojan, Biography, Czech (with English subtitles), Czech Republic, Slovakia, 2018, 144 minutes

Amazon

Torn

Can one be a Catholic priest and an Observant Jew at the same time? Twelve years after he was ordained as a Polish Catholic priest discovers that he was born to Jewish parents. The film follows his amazing journey: from conducting mass in a church in Poland to life as an observant Jew in a religious kibbutz in Israel. Torn between two identities he is unable to renounce either, and consequently, he is unaccepted by both religions as well as the state of Israel. Now, he is required to choose.

Director Ronit Kertsner, Documentary, Polish, Hebrew, French (with English subtitles), Israel, 2017, 72 minutes

Go2Films

Tunnel of Hope

The unbelievable escape story of the grandmother of Jared Kushner. In 1943, 250 Jewish slave workers successfully escaped from a Nazi labor camp in Novogrudok, Belarus, via a tunnel they dug. The film follows the remaining escapees, accompanied by their descendants, in an attempt to find the tunnel. The archaeological excavations dig up not only piles of dirt and some physical remnants, but also dredge up the memories, pain and hope of three generations that merge to become one story.

Director Dror H. Shwartz. Documentary, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2015, 88 minutes

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Very Semi-Serious

Why do cartoons feel like a quintessentially Jewish art form? From comic books to graphic novels, Jews have blazed a trail in illustrated storytelling. The single panel cartoon—a few squiggles and even fewer words—enlightens, maddens, confuses and delights. Like the shortest short story or lyrical haiku, it strips humor to its most bare. And nowhere does that art form soar higher than in the New Yorker magazine. According to cartoon editor Bruce Mankoff, cartoons make the strange familiar and the familiar strange. Watching Very Semi-Serious is like getting together with someone else’s crazy relatives; we see ourselves in them, but we’re glad we don’t have to go home with them. Famed and would-be cartoonists return week after week to vie for the approval of the acerbic, egotistical, wildly funny and deeply human Mankoff. From the inimitable neurosis of Roz Chast to the insane drawings of Farley Katz to the offbeat musings of BEK (Bruce Eric Kaplan), this cast of characters draws us into their eccentric views of what it’s like to be human. Filmmaker Leah Wolchok’s peek behind the curtain reveals the people and pain that makes the humor poignant. Like binging on a year’s worth of New Yorker cartoons, Very Semi-Serious delights and leaves you wanting more.

Director Leah Wolchok, Documentary, English, USA, 2015, 83 minutes

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Vice Versa

An innocent and honest relationship between a religious Yeshiva scholar and an 18 years old cancer patient girl, turns out to become an intimate and passionate love story that transcends the rules of religion, society and faith.

Director Amichai Greenberg, Feature, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2015, 62 minutes

Go2Films

Waiting for Anya

During the harrows of WWII, Jo, a young shepherd along with the help of the widow Horcada, helps to smuggle Jewish children across the border from southern France into Spain.

Director Ben Cookson, 2020, UK, Belgium, 109 minutes

Amazon

Wasserman: The Rain Man

Seventy-three-year-old Wasserman swore never to pray again. He blames God for his family’s annihilation during the Holocaust. He is unwilling to forgive. But a dire situation forces Wasserman to reconsider. He needs money; his creditors are knocking on his door. The only way his religious neighbors will help him out is if he agrees to join them in the synagogue for a communal prayer to end the devastating drought that is plaguing their region. Now Wasserman has to confront his two daughters and grandson in a final attempt to hold on to his family and his land. He has 24 hours to make a decision.

Director Idit Shechori, Feature, Hebrew (with English subtitles), Israel, 2018, 57 minutes

Go2Films

catskills

Welcome to Kutsher’s: The Last Catskills Resort

Kutsher’s Country Club was the last surviving Jewish resort in the Catskills.  One of the legendary Borscht Belt hotels during its heyday, Kutsher’s was family-owned and operated for over 100 years.  Exploring the full Dirty Dancing-era Catskills experience— and how it changed American pop culture in the comedy, sports and vacation industries— this award-winning documentary captures a last glimpse of a lost world as it disappears before our eyes.

Directed by Caroline Laskow and Ian Rosenberg. USA, Documentary, 2015, English, 73 minutes

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We Shall Not Die Now

We Shall Not Die Now is a documentary film that chronicles the Holocaust, when, between 1939 and 1945, over six million Jews and millions of others were systematically murdered by the Nazi regime.

Seventy-five years after the conclusion of the war, the film explores not only the horrific human tragedy and what we can learn from it, but also the resilience of those that rebuilt their lives despite the unimaginable.

Told by the survivors and liberators who experienced it firsthand, We Shall Not Die Now is an exploration into the darkest and brightest sides of the human spirit.

Director Ashton Gleckman, Documentary, USA, 2019, 100 minutes

Amazon  Film Website

 

Q&A

On May 26, we had a Q&A about the film. View a recording of the event here.

When Jews Were Funny

Insightful and often hilarious, the latest from documentary filmmaker Alan Zweig surveys the history of Jewish comedy, from the early days of the Borsht Belt to the present, ultimately exploring not just ethnicity in the entertainment industry, but also the entire unruly question of what it means to be Jewish. Zweig presents a casual, first-person history of Jewish stand-up, unearthing some amazing archival footage and interviewing some of America’s most successful and influential comics, including Howie Mandel, Jackie Mason, Marc Maron, Gilbert Gottfried, Shelley Berman, Shecky Greene, Jack Carter, David Steinberg, and Super Dave Osborne.

Director Alan Zweig, 2013, Canada, 90 minutes

Amazon Tubi

Who Will Write Our History

In November 1940, days after the Nazis sealed 450,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, a secret band of journalists, scholars, and community leaders decided to fight back. Led by historian Emanuel Ringelblum and known by the code name Oyneg Shabes, this clandestine group vowed to defeat Nazi lies and propaganda not with guns or fists but with the ultimate weapon: the truth.

Director Roberta Grossman, Faith and Spirituality, Documentary, English, USA,  2019, 97 minutes

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