Event List

Yoav, a successful architect, has everything he’s ever wanted. His lover of 15 years, Dan, is a younger lawyer who adores him. Alma is a successful artist and Yoav’s best friend—she is like a mother and a sister to him.
However, when Alma announces she is 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. Yoav’s tight grasp on his life begins to come apart, leading to self-destructive behavior that threatens to destroy his relationship with Dan, unravel his friendship with Alma, and cost him everything.
MATURE THEMES, STRONG SEXUAL CONTENT

Film: 90 minutes

Director: Yuval Hadadi

Production country: Israel

Year: 2019

Community Partner:

Composer Benjamin Till explores what it means to be British and Jewish in this quirky and heartwarming musical film. Till set about finding 100 British Jews, one born in every year between 1918 and 2017. Each scene features a person who is a year older than in the prior scene, reflecting the true celebration of the diversity of Jewish people. A ”musical postcard from British Jewry to the rest of the world.”

Film: 12 minutes

Director: Benjamin Till

Production country: UK

Year: 2018

“This is not a Holocaust film but rather a drama that looks at life beneath the simple surface in a quaint Hungarian village after WWII.”
​
Two orthodox Jewish men, dressed in black, arrive at the train station of a small Hungarian village on a hot August day in 1945, one year after the German troops have left.  Their homecoming disrupts the established rhythm of life in the village, where preparations are underway for the wedding of the town clerk’s son. The clerk fears the men may be heirs of the village’s’ deported Jews and expects them to demand the return of their illegally seized property. Their reappearance forces the local residents to confront and come to terms with the horrific events of the previous year. Based on the acclaimed short story HOMECOMING by Gábor T. Szántó.
MATURE LANGUAGE, MATURE THEMES

Film: 91 minutes

Director: Ferenc Török

Production country: Hungary

Year: 2017

A Palestinian-Israeli boy named Eyad is sent to a prestigious boarding school in Jerusalem, where he struggles with issues of language, culture, and identity. Gifted Eyad (Tawfeek Barhom) is given the chance to go to a prestigious Jewish boarding school in Jerusalem. As he desperately tries to fit in with his Jewish schoolmates and within Israeli society, Eyad develops a friendship with another outsider, Jonathan (Michael Moshonov), a boy suffering from muscular dystrophy, and gradually becomes part of the home Jonathan shares with his mother, Edna (Yael Abecassis). After falling in love with Naomi (Daniel Kitsis), a Jewish girl, Eyed leaves school when their relationship is uncovered, and he discovers that he will have to sacrifice his identity in order to be accepted. Faced with a choice, Eyad will have to make a decision that will change his life forever.

Film:  104 minutes

Director: Eran Riklis

Production country:  Israel

Year:  2014

Four overweight friends from the Israeli city of Ramle are fed up of dieting and the dieting club they belong to. When Herzl (342 lbs.), the main protagonist, loses his job as a cook and starts working as a dishwasher in a Japanese restaurant in Ramle, he discovers the world of Sumo where large people like him are honored and appreciated. Through Kitano (132 lbs.), the restaurant owner, a former Sumo coach in Japan (who is supposedly hiding from the Yakuza in Israel), he falls in love with a sport involving ”two fatsos in diapers and girly hairdos”. Herzl wants Kitano to be their coach, but Kitano is reluctant—they first have to earn their spurs. A MATTER OF SIZE is a comedy about a ‘coming out’ of a different kind – overweight people learning to accept themselves.

Film: 94 minutes

Director: Erez Tadmor, Sharon Maymon

Production country: Israel

Year: 2010

“A boy forms a secret friendship with a mythical creature in a universal and heartwarming tale of friendship and familial bonds.”
Since the sudden loss of his older brother in a car crash, ten-year-old Adam (Yoav Sadian) has been struggling at home and failing at school. Neglected by his grief-stricken parents, he is overcome with his own sorrow and guilt, while also confronting the daily torment of class bullies. Everything changes the day Adam meets Abulele, an oversized furry monster of legend that is feared by many but proves to be a friendly companion to children in need. As Adam and his new best friend outsmart his tormentors at school, the boy’s parents start to suspect their son is harboring a secret. Meantime, an elite special forces team closes in, tasked with capturing or killing the
beast.
FAMILY FRIENDLY

Film: 90 minutes

Cast: Yoav Sadian, Bar Paly, Idan Barkai, Makram Khoury, Yehuda Mor, Oded Leopold

Director: Jonathan Geva

Production country:  Israel

Year: 2015

Community partner:

When retired 68 year-old Meir discovers that his thirty years of planning the annual village celebration have been summarily discarded, and the job has been given to inexperienced local teens instead, the ground beneath his feet begins to give way. In his effort to restore a sense of meaning and vitality, Meir begins to rebel against the inevitable: the betrayal of his physical body, the growing distance from his children, and the loss of relevance.
MATURE LANGUAGE, MATURE THEMES

Film:  82 minutes

Director: Oren Gerner

Production country: Israel

Year: 2019

Shortly after the death of his uncles, Didier Frenkel descends into the basement of their shared home and finds a treasure: an ancient archive of animated films from Egypt starring Mish-Mish Effendi, the Arab equivalent of Mickey Mouse, and others. His Jewish father and uncles created these characters but never got the attention they richly deserved. Didier begins restoring the films and unveils the story of the rise and fall of these pioneers of Arab animation. Surprisingly, Didier’s mother strongly opposes this project.

Film: 73 minutes

Director: Tal Michael

Production countries: Israel, France

Year: 2019

September 5th 1972, the tenth day of the Munich Olympics—the Palestinian terrorist group Black September stormed the Israeli athletes’ quarters. The world watched live on television as eleven hostages were taken and later killed. For the first time, this story will be told through the eyes of four women who were directly impacted by that day: an athlete, a widow, and two undercover agents. Their fates were changed forever as their wellbeing and life views were impacted by the trauma. A film about love and death; conflict and reconciliation; war and peace.
MATURE THEMES, SOME GRAPHIC IMAGES

Film: 78 minutes

Director: Francine Zuckerman

Production Country: Canada

Year: 2019

Albert Einstein, the most famous scientist of all time, was a world-renowned celebrity. He was greeted like a rock star when he appeared in public. An anti-war firebrand, Einstein also spoke out on issues ranging from women’s rights and racism, to immigration and nuclear arms control. But today, his image has been neutered into that of a charmingly absent-minded genius. He was, in fact, a powerful force for social change and a model for political activism. Using a wealth of rarely-seen archival footage, correspondence, and new and illuminating interviews, filmmaker Julia Newman makes the case that Albert Einstein’s example of social and political activism is as important today as are his brilliant, ground-breaking theories.

Film: 80 minutes

Director: Julia Newman

Production country: USA

Year: 2020

Community Partner:

“Dutch filmmaker Jean van de Velde captures a dark period in South Africa’s recent history, balancing a nail-biting political thriller with spectacular courtroom intrigue.”
In 1963, apartheid is rampant in South Africa. Nelson Mandela and nine other defendants, including Jewish anti-apartheid fighters, are arrested on a farm for conspiring to commit sabotage and treason against the repressive South African government. Tenacious white Afrikaner lawyer Bram Fisher steps up to the challenge as lead counsel whose defendants faced a possible death sentence. Fisher risks his career and family to defend Mandela and his inner circle in this historical thriller set in South Africa’s incendiary segregation era. As Mandela fights to expose South Africa’s corrupt, unjust system, Fischer attempts to hide his own ties to the resistance. This riveting drama combines nail-biting political and courtroom intrigue to explore South Africa’s seminal struggle against racism, and it highlights the little-known Jewish figures who sought to end entrenched discrimination in their country.
CONTAINS VIOLENCE

Film: 123 minutes

Director: Jean van de Velde

Production country: Netherlands

Year: 2018

The year is 1940, and French-Jewish socialist politician and three-time Prime Minister Leon Blum has been imprisoned at Buchenwald. This touching historical drama starring Elsa Zylberstein and Hippolyte Girardot follows Jeanne Reichenbach, who has been in love with Blum since they were teenagers but has always only admired him from afar. Now she is married with a son, but she is driven by the urge to link her fate with Blum’s once and for all—As the Nazis invade France, she abandons her comfortable life and risks everything to reunite with and marry him in prison.
SOME INTENSE SCENES

Film: 105 minutes

Director: Laurent Heynemann

Production country: France

Year: 2019

Thirty years after the queer Swedish disco-pop band Army of Lovers became an international phenomenon, its Jewish frontman, Jean-Pierre Barda, embarks on a new chapter when he uproots his existence to move from Sweden to Israel. In this new documentary, director Asaf Galay joins Barda alongside his journey at the age of 50. Army of Lovers (a blend of ABBA, the B-52s, and performance art) continues to rock pride celebrations and underground club parties with its mix of high camp, daring music videos, and a motto of “More is more, less is a bore.” Barda’s identity—flamboyant, philosophical, and religious all at once—explores what it means to never doubt oneself.
MATURE THEMES, SEXUAL CONTENT

Film: 65 minutes

Director: Asaf Galay

Production country: Israel

Year: 2019

Community partner:

A six-hour interview with David Ben-Gurion, one of modern history”s greatest leaders, emerges from the obscurity of an archive where it has lain unrecognized for decades. It is 1968, and Ben-Gurion is 82 years old. He lives in the seclusion of his home in the desert, remote from all political discourse, which allows him a perspective on the Zionist enterprise. His introspective soul-searching is the focus of this film, and his reflections provide a surprising vision for today”s crucial decisions and for the future of Israel.

Film: 70 minutes

Director: Yariv Mozer

Production countries: Israel, France, Germany

Year: 2016

Noah Klieger was a French Jewish teenager during WWII. He lay on the beach of Dunkirk when hundreds of thousands of British soldiers were evacuated to Britain. He smuggled Jewish children from Belgium to Switzerland. He was captured by the Germans and sent to the Auschwitz death camp. When he arrived there, he claimed himself as a boxer which saved his life. He was the last remnant of the boxing team of Auschwitz death camp, the oldest active journalist in the world, and a crew member of the ship “Exodus – 1947.” In the film, Noah returns for the first time to the places that marked his life. Noah Klieger is an example of courage, optimism, and resilience.
SOME SCENES OF THE HOLOCAUST

Film: 60 minutes

Director: Uri Borreda

Production country: Israel

Year: 2017

APFF@AJFF:
A celebration of the life of Ralph Modjeski, one of America’s greatest bridge designers. He was behind some of the 20th century’s most significant bridges which transformed America: the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge, the Huey P. Long Bridge in New Orleans, and Quebec Bridge in Canada, among others. The film takes a deeper look at the scientific mind and artistic soul of a Polish-born, Paris-trained immigrant; a virtuoso pianist who contributed to the building of modern America.

Film: 95 minutes

Director: Basia Myszyński

Production countries: USA, Canada

Year: 2016

Community partner:

Nadia is a 20-year-old Arab girl who has a secret love affair with Nimer, a PLO activist. They move to England, where Nimer is caught by the authorities and Nadia is left alone. A slick character fixes her with an Israeli passport of a Jewish girl that enables her to return to Israel.

Twenty years later Nadia is now Maya, a successful choreographer who is married to a Jewish official at the Ministry of Justice, Yoav. They have two children. But her past catches her up when Nimer reappears. Yoav notices his wife”s distress and realizes that she”s hiding something. Their relationship is on the verge of crisis.

Film: 115 minutes

Director: Tova Ascher

Production countries: Israel, United Kingdom

Year: 2015

“Yet another standout performance by Shira Haas, cementing her place as one of the best young Jewish actors today.
This taleof a dysfunctional family is an intense, gripping drama.” Shadowed by a strict, military father who inflicts severe methods of punishment as a form of discipline, seventeen-year-old Ariella commits a grave error that her father isn’t willing to punish her for. Seeking a punishment of her own, Ariella embarks on a dark quest where she will discover a secret to her father’s past that will lead them to confront one another.
MATURE LANGUAGE, MATURE THEMES, NUDITY, INTENSE SCENES

Film: 104 minutes

Directors: Aviad Givon, Imri Matalon

Production country: Israel

Year: 2019

It is only now, at the age of 98, that Marthe Cohn, a French Jew, can talk freely about her experience as a spy during World War II. Known at the time as Chichinette, she was recruited as a young woman by the French army and sent to gather intelligence from inside Germany. At four-and-a-half-feet tall, Cohn—then as today—may not look like much of a threat, but her incredible bravery and resourcefulness contributed to the Nazis’ eventual defeat. The Accidental Spy is as dynamic as the woman whose extraordinary story it tells.

Film: 86 minutes

Director: Nicola Hens

Production countries: Germany, France

Year: 2020

On the eighth of May 1972, four hijackers from the Palestinian organization ”Black September” took control of Belgian Sabena Flight 571 from Brussels to Tel Aviv. The hijacking marked the beginning of thirty nerve-wracking hours, bounding together fascinating human, military, and political drama inside and outside of the plane.

Film: 98 minutes

Director: Rani Saar

Production country: Israel

Year: 2015

“This film is set inside the inner sanctum of a symphony hall and tells the story of a childless Israeli musical couple seeking to form a family.”
Abraham is the conductor of the Jerusalem Philharmonic Orchestra, and his wife, Sarah, is the harpist. With no children, their melancholy life revolves around their music. In this contemporary adaptation of the biblical story of Abraham and Sarah, Hagar, a young horn player from East Jerusalem, joins the orchestra and forms a close personal relationship with both Sarah and Abraham, eventually agreeing to carry the couple’s baby. Two rival prodigies are born—one Jewish, one Arab—but neither want to take the course laid out for them by their parents. Nominated for five Israeli Academy Awards and winner of the Best Cinematography and Lia Van Leer Jewish Heritage
awards at the Jerusalem Film Festival.
MATURE LANGUAGE, MATURE THEMES

Film:  98 minutes

Director: Ori Sivan

Production country:  Israel

Year:  2016

Orna is the mother of three young children with a husband struggling to start his own restaurant. To help support her family, Orna returns to the workplace, landing a job with a former army superior, Benny, who is now a successful real estate developer. While Orna embraces her new position and tries to balance its demands with her home life, she begins to experience escalating sexual harassment from her boss. Her rapid rise through the ranks and her increasing financial success seem to parallel a pattern of predatory behavior which brings her career and marital relationship to the brink.
MATURE THEMES, NUDITY, GRAPHIC VIOLENCE

Film: 93 minutes

Director: Michal Aviad

Production country: Israel

Year: 2018

“An untold story based on fact and fiction of Thessaloniki’s Jewish community during the Second World War.”
It’s 1942 and German law has been imposed in Thessaloniki, Greece, where Estrea, a young Jewish girl, has fallen in love with Yorgos, a Christian boy who works in a small nightclub. The club acts as a retreat from the atmosphere that has taken over the city, and people gather there to hear famed bouzouki player, Vassilis Tsitsanis. The score features music by Tsitsanis—one of the leading Greek composers of his time—which permeates this film.

Film: 118 minutes

Director: Manoussos Manoussakis

Production country: Greece

Year: 2016

Five generations, four chapters, and one lineage Known as “the Israeli Kennedys,” the Dayan family has been a prominent presence in Israeli politics and culture since the country’s inception. In her riveting documentary series, director Anat Goren examines five generations of Israel’s first family and the giant shadow cast by its famous patriarch, Moshe. Recounting their stories for the camera, various members of the clan offer an uncompromising glimpse into this Israeli dynasty, blessed with talent and charisma but plagued by depression. Producing some of the country’s most famous politicians, rock stars, poets and directors, the Dayans” history and that of the country they inhabit are inextricably bound together.
MATURE THEMES, DRUG USE

Film: 215 minutes total in two parts.

Director: Anat Goren

Production country: Israel

Year: 2019

The Egg Cream contains neither eggs nor cream – It was a product of necessity and hardship, but a source of joy and sweetness. Through archival images and a tour of egg cream establishments led by the filmmaker and his young daughter, the film examines the Jewish experience in America and the mythology of a simpler time.

Film: 15 minutes

Directors: Nora Miller, Peter Miller

Production country: USA

Year: 2018

Anat (Naama Preis, winner of the Jerusalem Film Festival award for
Best Actress) has never been able to reach her father’s exacting musical standards, and now her family’s hope of producing a musical prodigy rests on her unborn son. When the baby is born deaf, she cannot accept it and resorts to extreme measures to ensure that her child will be the composer that her father always wanted. But when the boy grows up indifferent to his destiny as a great pianist, Anat will have to stand up to her father—and her own actions.
MATURE THEMES, SEXUAL CONTENT

Film: 80 minutes

Director: Itay Tal

Production country: Israel

Year: 2019

Israel’s only woman prime minister defends her clouded legacy in this riveting portrait backboned by a blunt, unaired TV interview. During her turbulent tenure, Golda Meir, idolized globally but often reviled in Israel, confronted sizable domestic and international challenges. Shortly before her death, she was interviewed by Israeli television. Once the show ended, cameras kept rolling as hard- nosed Meir spoke freely between cigarette puffs about her stormy premiership and its personal toll. This extraordinary off-air exchange is buttressed by testimonials from devotees and detractors alike, as well as rare archival footage charting Golda’s trailblazing rise to power and tragic demise.

Film: 85 minutes

Directors: Sagi Bornstein, Udi Nir, Shani Rozanes

Production countries: Israel, Germany

Year: 2019

A boorish Israeli-American couple plan a Sabbath dinner party for a group of fellow ex-pat friends and family in their Hollywood Hills mansion. What could possibly go wrong? Well, start with a deadly mix of alcohol, add inflated egos, some inappropriate lust, and top with raging jealousy, and the result is a cauldron of murderous mayhem. A shotgun, garden shears, kitchen knives, and even a garbage disposal are used as weapons of choice as these deranged guests turn on each other in director Michael Mayer’s outrageous and bloody comedy. Actors include Austin’s own Alon Pdut.
GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, SEXUAL CONTENT, DRUG USE

Film: 93 minutes

Director: Michael Mayer

Production countries: USA, Israel, Italy

Year:2019

Community partner:

In the midst of WWII, a German couple, Fritz and Emma, agree to hide Albert, a Jewish refugee, at their remote farm in the Black Forest. Since his marriage with Emma has remained childless, Fritz uses this opportunity to suggest an unorthodox deal: He asks Albert to sleep with his wife and conceive a child on his behalf. The consequences are dramatic: Emma discovers her sexuality, Fritz cannot control his jealousy, and Albert feels trapped between the two of them. Against the background of war, an unpredictable drama unfolds that turns offenders into victims and vice versa.
MATURE CONTENT

Film: 104 minutes

Director: Franziska Schlotterer

Production country: Germany

Year: 2016

What does it means to be Jewish in the modern world? Inspired by real-life events, the film witnesses a son’s encounter with his father after telling him that he is about to have a baby with his non-Jewish partner. The stoic father makes an urgent case to practice traditions that the anxious son finds troubling. As the bubbling turns to a boil, they both realize that they are but two parts of a much greater whole.

Film: 18 minutes

Director: Michael Tobin

Production country: Canada

Year: 2019

“A unique journey about a rabbi who experienced personal desolation and succeeded in rehabilitating his and his community’s life.”
The Admor of Sanz-Klausenburg was a rabbi who experienced personal devastation, and despite this succeeded in rehabilitating his own life and that of his Chassidic community. Through his heroic story, the film presents the narratives of the Holocaust as told by different members of the ultra-Orthodox community. HIDDEN FACE presents the complex relationship between ultra-Orthodox Jews and the memory of the Holocaust. Through rare archival footage and interviews with Sanz Chassidim, it reveals the ways they experience the revival and spiritual victory over the Nazis and pass it on to the ensuing generations, while dealing with the biggest question of all—where was God during the Holocaust?
FAMILY FRIENDLY

Film:  54 minutes

Director: Eyal Datz

Production country: Israel

Year: 2018

The story of a 78-year-old Greek man and his Hasidic rapper son, who have been estranged for many years. They embark together on a road trip from Israel to Greece searching for an old magician who saved the father”s life during World War II. The journey leads them to absurd encounters, and it ultimately brings them to a final confrontation of father and son.
CONTAINS NUDITY, ADULT SITUATIONS

Film: 100 minutes

Director: Nicola Hens

Production country: Israel

Year: 2014

Israel’s 6th Prime minister, Menachem Begin led Israel for six dramatic and tumultuous years, which produced waves that are still felt deeply within the fabric of Israel’s social and political landscape today. During Begin’s shortened one-and-a-half terms of office, he faced a maelstrom of challenges and made a handful of fateful decisions that led to both creating peace and launching a war kindled by hubris. Exploring these events, the film depicts a multi-faceted portrait of a man who held on to an unwavering ideology full of conflicts, as well as the cultural mosaic and fissured society that he sought to lead. The film merges rare archival footage shown for the first time, as well as current interviews with key figures from Menachem Begin’s time as Prime Minister.

Film: 85 minutes

Director: Levi Zini

Production country: Israel

Year: 2020

The true story of Sara Goralnik, a 12- year-old Polish Jew whose entire family was killed by the Nazis in 1942. A powerful saga of courage and compassion—After a grueling escape to the Ukrainian countryside, Sara steals her Christian best friend’s identity and finds refuge looking after the children of a farmer and his young wife. Inadvertently stumbling across a dark secret behind her employer’s marriage, her own predicament becomes more precarious, compounding the greatest secret she must protect: her own identity.
MATURE LANGUAGE, NUDITY, SOME INTENSE SCENES, SEXUAL CONTENT

Film: 111 minutes

Director: Steven Oritt

Production country:  USA

Year: 2019

England, 1933. After running away from home, Kitty and her brother David cheer themselves up by playing soldiers. But their game takes an unexpected turn when they discover a suspicious German hiding in a clifftop hut. The man is a Jewish refugee by the name of Albert Einstein.

Film: 18 minutes

Director: Luke Rodgers

Production country: UK

Year: 2019

ON THE MAP combines the pulse-pounding action of a high-stakes thriller with an incendiary political backdrop to deliver a film that will mesmerize basketball fans and captures the spirit of a nation triumphant against all odds.”
This film recounts how an underdog Israeli basketball team prevailed over a series of European basketball powers. This against-all-odds story of Maccabi Tel Aviv’s 1977 European Championship took place at a time when the Middle East was still reeling from the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 1972 Olympic massacre at Munich, and the 1976 hijacking of an Air France flight from Tel Aviv. Through the lens of sports, ON THE MAP presents a story of how one team captured the heart of a nation amidst domestic turmoil and the global machinations of the Cold War. Told through the eyes of six American basketball players who joined Maccabi and helped the club defeat top teams from Spain, Italy and the Soviet Union, the film features interviews with basketball icon Bill Walton and former NBA Commissioner David Stern.

Film: 85 minutes

Director: Dani Menkin

Production countries: Israel, USA

Year: 2016

A triangle of fatherhood ties, a triangle of love.
70-year-old Yaakov Fidelman (Sasson Gabai) 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.
When Anton falls in love with Hava, Noah”s pregnant wife, the two young men compete not only over a father, but also over a woman and the baby she carries.
Will the old man understand that his only hope for redemption is to learn to let go and admit and accept his weaknesses and the dictate of time?

Film: 105 minutes

Director: Yossi Madmoni

Production country: Israel

Year: 2012

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. When Indian cinema began 100 years ago, it was taboo for Hindu and Islamic women to perform on screen, so Indian Jewish women, who were more liberal and progressive, took on female lead roles, which they then dominated for decades. Because these stars used stage names, audiences assumed they were Muslims or Christians—until now! From the silent era through Bollywood’s golden age, Indian cinema icons share their highs and lows and how their careers pushed the boundaries of Indian-Jewish culture.
Interviews plus rare archival footage and retro-style music and animation revive the all-singing, all-dancing cheeky feel of a Bollywood production.

Film: 85 minutes

Director: Danny Ben-Moshe

Production country: Australia

Year: 2018

Community partner: 

In this heartwarming, sweetly funny romance-dramedy, a thirty-something Israeli couple develops baby fever, putting their relationship to the test in a frenzy to get pregnant. Liran and Tali are happily married, but their lives are missing one thing: a baby. With the biological clock ticking, they embark on protracted fertility treatments, a physical and emotional roller-coaster of medical procedures, and regimented lovemaking. Facing pressure from family, friends, and each other, it’s soon clear that the road to parenthood is no walk in the park. Tackling a sensitive topic with earnest performances, this frank portrayal of modern pregnancy landed four Ophir (Israeli Academy Award) nominations, including Best Director.
MATURE LANGUAGE, NUDITY, SEXUAL CONTENT

Film: 90 minutes

Director: Erez Tadmor

Production country: Israel

Year: 2019

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.

Film: 107 minutes

Director: Pepe Danquart

Production country: Germany

Year: 2014

APFF@AJFF
Doctor Zabek is a famous Polish neurosurgeon working in one of Warsaw’s hospitals. At the other end of the world, in San Francisco, another neurosurgeon of Polish origins, doctor Bankiewicz, invented a breakthrough technology for placing genes and hormones directly in human’s brain.
The new technology has been used so far to successfully cure Parkinson’s disease and brain tumors. Now the doctors discover that it seems the technique may cure the very rare disease, AACD DEFICIT, which stops the human body’s physical and mental development in infancy.

Film: 80 minutes

Director: Magdalena Zagała

Production country: Poland

Year: 2020

Community partner:

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.

Film: 112 minutes

Director: Avi Nesher

Production country: Israel

Year: 2012

Having spent a lifetime concealing his heritage, an aging German Holocaust survivor tries to come to terms with his past. Born Menachem Teitelbaum, Marcus Schwarz (German Academy Award winner Mario Adorf) escaped Auschwitz with his life only to exterminate his Jewishness. Without family, a synagogue, or a single Jewish friend, the hardened old man has so effectively created a new identity that, when faced with his own mortality, the rabbis refuse his appeal to be buried in a Jewish cemetery in Cologne. Determined to return to his birthplace and establish his ancestry, Marcus enlists the help of Gül (Katharina Derr), a brash, chain-smoking Turkish woman with a troubled history of her own. The unlikely duo sets out on a road trip to a small village on the Hungarian-Romanian border, a journey that will irrevocably change them both.

Film: 93 minutes

Director: Pierre-Henry Salfati

Production countries: Germany, Switzerland, France

Year: 2016

PORTRAYAL follows Roman Lapshin across three continents and five nations as he puts together the pieces of a mysterious puzzle and comes to terms with a family legacy and his own personal journey of restoration, growth and healing.

Since he was a child, Roman has been haunted by a secret that his late grandfather revealed to him when he was only 12 years old. A personal disclosure regarding the mysterious and troubling origins of thousands of pieces of missing artwork his grandfather had painted over his lifetime. Roman is convinced that he alone must investigate and expose the murky fate of this art to redeem his grandfather’s name and artistic legacy. But finding the paintings will mean going against the wishes of his entire family—who have been guarding the secret all along. It also means confronting the notorious and powerful man at the center of the mystery, whom Roman believes exploited his grandfather when he was a desperate, recent immigrant to a new country.
MATURE LANGUAGE, SOME INTENSE IMAGES

Film: 96 minutes

Director: Billie Mintz

Production country: Canada

Year: 2020

A road trip focusing on two old men coming to grips with memories of their parents. Extraordinary scenes from the countries they travel through.”
An 80-year-old translator, Ali Ungár, discovers a book by a former SS officer recounting his war experiences in Slovakia. Ali realizes that one chapter may well describe his own parents’ execution. Armed with a pistol, he heads for Vienna to find that SS man to take revenge; instead Ali finds the man’s 70-year-old son, Georg, a retired teacher. Georg has always avoided his father, but the translator’s visit arouses his curiosity, and he invites Ali on a trip through Slovakia, embarking on a bittersweet journey to meet surviving witnesses of the wartime tragedy. But while Georg is basically out to have a good time, Ali is hoping to find out how his parents died. Gradually, these two very different men begin to warm to each other, and together they discover a country eager to forget its past. Oscillating between comedy and tragedy, this road trip 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.
MATURE LANGUAGE, MATURE THEMES

Film: 114 minutes

Director: Martin Šulík

Production countries: Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria

Year: 2018

Nazi major Karl Plagge arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania, as part of the occupation force during WWII. With the SS hellbent on murdering every Jewish man, woman and child, Plagge decided to save Jews rather than murder them. On the surface, he was commandant of the HKP forced labor camp; in reality, he was sheltering hundreds of Jewish families. By the end, many were saved, but many more were executed by the SS and buried in a mass grave. With the government about to tear down the former HKP site, a group of scientists arrives to locate the hiding places of those who were saved and identify the mass grave of the murdered. The film tracks the stories of a child survivor of the camp, an American physician whose mother was saved by Plagge, and Plagge himself.
MATURE LANGUAGE

Film: 52 minutes

Directors: Ric Esther Bienstock, Yaron Niski

Production countries: Canada, Israel

Year: 2019

A screen adaptation of Jerzy Ficowski’s poem under the same title from the volume ”Reading of Ashes” that is devoted to the subject of the Holocaust and World War II. The poetry volume was published on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Film: 13 minutes

Director: Gabi Bania

Production country: Poland

Year: 2020

Three children from the West Bank are smuggled into Israel, arriving at the doorstep of George and Rita’s house in Jaffa. Their mother is dead, and their father has been sentenced to life imprisonment. As Israeli Palestinians, George is afraid that hiding illegal aliens will endanger Rita and himself, while Rita believes the arrival of these children could give meaning to her life. Nearby, a foreign film is being shot. Jerry, an English director, is making a movie about his parents’ love affair in 1947, when they served in the British army in Palestine. George is invited to play a part in the film. When the two stories intertwine, tensions erupt.
MATURE LANGUAGE, DRUG USE

Film: 96 minutes

Director: Ram Loevy

Production country: Israel

Year: 2019

Martin Goldsmith never knew what happened to his parents before they escaped from Germany in 1941. Over a weekend, he confronts his father, and we are brought back to the complex and confusing 1930s. His parents, talented musicians, are only able to perform as members of the Jewish Cultural Federation, an extraordinary artistic organization fully controlled by the Reich Chamber of Culture. Featuring Bruno Ganz as Goldsmith’s father in his final performance, this film to all intents and purposes seems like a documentary but is in fact a masterful recreation of Goldsmith’s book ”The Inextinguishable Symphony.”
MATURE LANGUAGE

Film: 90 minutes

Directors: Anders Østergaard, Erzsébet Rácz

Production countries: Denmark, Germany

Year: 2020

Purchase Martin Goldsmith’s book, on which the film is based.

“Director Raul Graizer subtly illustrates the idea that our social, religious, and sexual identities are more fluid than fixed.”
The emotionally distant Thomas leads a lonely life as a Berlin coffee shop pastry chef until starting a closet affair and passionate tryst with Oren, a married Israeli businessman. Bereft over the sudden death of his long-distance lover, Thomas travels to Jerusalem, seeking solace in the city where he can feel closer to Oren. Anat, Oren’s widow, runs a small café. Thomas finds work there with the unsuspecting widow and quickly turns the struggling café into a successful business, after his talents as a pastry chef are put to use. As business flourishes and Anat finds herself drawn to Thomas, the bereaved pair forges a bond that blurs lines of nationality, religion, and sexuality. Winner of the Lia Van Leer Award for Jewish heritage at the Jerusalem Film Festival and Ecumenical Jury prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
MATURE THEMES, MATURE LANGUAGE, NUDITY

Film: 105 minutes

Director: Ofir Raul Graizer

Production countries: Germany, Israel

Year: 2017

Community Partner:

Filmmaker Jonathan Ofek grew up in Jerusalem and in an Indian Ashram— a fact that he had to keep secret. He was taught to dedicate his life to his Guru, to reach his goal in life, awaken from the ”illusion,” realize the ”truth,” and become enlightened. Twenty years (and a lot of therapy) later, Jonathan sets out on a journey of discovery to understand the effect these secrets had on him and to find out what happened to the other Ashram children. Was he raised in a cult?
MATURE LANGUAGE

Film: 67 minutes

Director: Jonathan Ofek

Production country: Israel

Year: 2019

“Exhilarating… a masterful look at the Israel Museum, which goes much deeper than a conventional documentary.” (The Jerusalem Post)
Renowned Israeli director Ran Tal takes a behind-the-scenes look at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem over a period of 18 months. This documentary goes inside the museum to observe its daily life, noting how it brings together a colorful cast of characters—the American museum director, The Jerusalemite curator, the Haredi kashrut inspector, custodians, artists, a singing security guard, tour guides, volunteers, soldiers, art lovers and others—from all over Jerusalem, Israel, and the world. We are also given insight into the Museum’s attempts to incorporate Palestinian representation into its collection. Tal’s elegantly shot film shows us not only a microcosm of Israeli society, but also how this institution seeks to both reflect and mold Israeli history and culture.
FAMILY FRIENDLY

Film: 74 minutes

Director: Ran Tal

Production country: Israel

Year: 2017

Pirate Captain Toledano interrogates a stowaway, a refugee from the Spanish Inquisition. The lad wants to become a pirate to plunder Spanish ships. The Captain must decide whether to make the stowaway a pirate, or to make him walk the plank.

Film: 10 minutes

Director: Arnon Z. Shorr

Production country: USA

Year: 2017

APFF@AJFF:
In the autumn of 1943, a young Jew named Emanuel Blatt, a refugee from a nearby ghetto, appears at a Polish monastery asking for help. Nazis are punishing Poles with death for hiding Jews. An SS squadron-leader in charge of a death squad comes to the monastery. The Day of Wrath is a full-of-tension blend of war thriller and morality play. Written by Polish writer of Jewish origin, Roman Brandstatter, the Holocaust and hope for survival are the main themes of this movie.
MATURE LANGUAGE

Film: 84 minutes

Director: Jacek Raginis-Królikiewicz

Production country: Poland

Year: 2019

Community partner:

A drama that explores the religious-secular divide in a family trying to mend broken relationships.”
Anat Abadi, a bright and intense young woman, long part of Tel Aviv’s wild club scene, has found God. Renouncing promiscuity, pork, and smartphones for a life of solemn devotion, she moves to Jerusalem, enrolls in an ultra-orthodox seminary, and gets engaged to a charismatic musician who’s also recently found religion. Complications arise when Abadi’s family tries to lure their willful daughter away from Orthodox Judaism and schemes to foil her upcoming nuptials. Amid rising tensions and shifting alliances, no one has a monopoly on virtue, as multi-layered plots converge with unexpected consequences. Sensitively exploring the religious-secular divide, this universal tale of broken relationships and forgiveness masterfully weaves its many threads with poignant, gently humorous performances by a stellar cast.
MATURE LANGUAGE

Film: 112 minutes

Director: Avi Nesher

Production country: Israel

Year: 2018

“Tired of being pushed around, a disenfranchised Sephardic father, whose daughter is expelled from a school for her ethnicity, launches the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party.”
When Yakov Cohen’s daughter is expelled from school for ethnic reasons, he decides to fight back. It’s 1983, and Yakov, a printer in Jerusalem, is just a regular guy. He has no knowledge of politics, no money, no connections, and no political experience. But he does have the will and the passion to take action, and a belief that he and other Sephardic Jews should be able to hold their heads up high. Yakov brings two friends along, and together they start the first ethnic political group in Jerusalem, with an operation characteristic of the people they represent: not the suit-wearing types, but rather the people working their way up from the bottom. Their operation is informal, full of love for their fellow man, and animated by a sense of humor and a great deal of rage.

Film: 99 minutes

Director: Eliran Malka

Production country: Israel

Year: 2018

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.

Film: 96 minutes

Director: William Gazecki

Production country: USA

Year: 2015

”Can we leave past sins behind? Our sages say we can.” Such are the opening lines that introduce this moving story about the relationship between a dedicated yeshiva student, Yochai, and terminally-ill 18-year-old Ayelet. When Ayelet is diagnosed with advanced bone cancer, she stubbornly refuses treatment. Her desperate father asks Yochai to become her spiritual mentor with the hope that he can persuade her to seek medical help. Ayelet is amused by what she perceives as Yochai”s awkward innocence but fascinated by his attempts to forge a deep relationship with God. Yochai, for his part, is mesmerized by Ayelet”s beauty and grace and is totally overwhelmed by being in such close proximity to a woman for the first time in his life. Finding himself deeply attracted to Ayelet, Yochai faces the most difficult decision of his life–whether to leave the yeshiva or abandon his newfound love.

Film: 62 minutes

Director: Amichai Greenberg

Production country: Israel

Year: 2015

“A Holocaust survivor’s son living in Trieste as a surgeon begins to doubt his actions of refusing to help a victim of a traffic accident. An unusual moral tale.”
Simone Segre, a renowned surgeon of Jewish origins, lives in the city of Trieste in the northeast of Italy. He has a quiet life, an elegant apartment, and no connection with his past. One day he finds himself assisting a male victim of a hit-and-run accident. But when he discovers a Nazi tattoo on his chest, Simone abandons him to his destiny. Filled with guilt, he ends up tracing the man’s family: Marica, the eldest daughter; Marcello, a teenager plagued with racial hate; and little Paolo. The night will come when Marica knocks at Simone’s door and unknowingly asks for payback.
MATURE CONTENT

Film: 96 minutes

Director: Mauro Mancini

Production countries:  Italy, Poland

Year: 2020

A comedy about how a mishap at a Jerusalem synagogue causes a major rift in a devout community in Jerusalem.”
When the women’s balcony in a small Jerusalem synagogue collapses, leaving the rabbi’s wife in a coma and the rabbi in shock, the congregation falls into crisis. A charismatic Hasidic rabbi appears to be a savior after the accident, but he slowly starts pushing his fundamentalist ways among the Modern Orthodox congregants. The changes he tries to impose test the women’s friendships and create a rift between the community’s women and men in this rousing tale about women speaking truth to patriarchal power.

Film: 96 minutes

Directors: Shlomit Nehama and Emil Ben-Shimon

Production country: Israel

Year: 2016

In this gentle, beautifully rendered historical family drama, a German- Jewish girl takes her first steps into adulthood, as world events intrude on her happy, carefree existence. Nine-year-old Anna is too busy with schoolwork and friends to notice Hitler’s face glaring from posters plastered all over 1933 Berlin. But when her father suddenly vanishes, and the family is secretly hurried out of Germany, Anna begins to understand life will never be the same. What follows is a courageous adventure full of fear and uncertainty, as Anna and her family navigate unfamiliar lands and cope with the challenges of being refugees. Oscar-winning filmmaker Caroline Link directs this adaptation of Judith Kerr’s semiautobiographical bestselling children’s novel.
FAMILY FRIENDLY

Film: 119 minutes

Director: Caroline Link

Production countries: Germany, Switzerland

Year: 2019

“A mystery involving a religious historian and his family. He is willing to risk everything to discover the truth.”
Yoel Halberstam, a senior Holocaust researcher, is in the midst of a legal battle with powerful forces in Austria concerning a massacre of Jews that occurred during WWII. An influential family of industrialists on whose land the murder took place is planning a real estate project on the very same property. Yoel suspects that their aim is to bury the affair for good, but he can’t find the conclusive evidence that would stop the project. Meticulous in his quest, Yoel toils in the basement of the Holocaust Institute in Jerusalem. While investigating the incident, Yoel examines classified testimonies of Holocaust survivors, and he is shocked to discover a testimony he never knew existed—one given by his mother in which she confesses to a substantial secret from her past. With his personal and professional life at stake, Yoel secretly pursues the lead, risking everything—career, wife and son, even his own beliefs—to solve the mystery about his identify.

Film: 94 minutes

Director: Amichai Greenberg

Production country: Israel

Year: 2017

The US is experiencing a surge in hate crimes. Stranger/Sister is the story of two ordinary women, one Muslim and one Jewish, who dare to believe they can join hands to stop the wave of hate. Overcoming a long history of distrust between their two religions, they build a movement that turns strangers into sisters. Following women from Sisterhood chapters in Austin, Chicago, and across the nation, the Sisters build a powerful network of hope in a time of chaos and hate.

Film: 39 minutes

Directors: Kirsten Kelly and Katie Taber

Production country: USA

Year: 2020

Community Partner:

Marvell Ginsburg’s renowned children’s book has been educating young children about the Holocaust for generations, telling the true story of the rescue and restoration of a small Torah from Czechoslovakia. This is now an animated film, narrated by Ed Asner, that brings illustrator Martin Lemel- man’s rich artwork to life and allows this story of redemption to reach a much broader audience.

Film: 21 minutes

Director: Marc Bennett

Production countries: USA

Year: 2019

A free program with a playlist of seven funny short films from one of Israel’s top film schools.

To Be a Cooperman | 2019 | 16 minutes | Director:  Benny Snyder

Pop 30 | 2019 | 18 minutes | Director: Shira Billig

Sushi,Meatballs, and Everything | 2018 | 10 minutes | Director: Liel Sharon Gur,

Miriam | 2018 | 6 minutes | Director: Shulamit Lifshitz

Getting Serious | 2013 | 20 minutes | Director: Matan Golomb

A Jerusalem Tale | 2007 | 14 minutes | Director: Tehila Wiesenberg-Kaiser

A Story About Rain | 2013 | 18 minutes | Director: Bracha Yaniger

Based on the Philip Roth novel. A famous American writer accepts a quest from a Czech emigrant to bring him back unique Yiddish manuscripts from communist Czechoslovakia. The writer accepts not only a dangerous journey to Prague, where he is watched at every step by communist secret police, but he also needs to face the emigrant’s flamboyant and wild wife. She is in possession of the manuscripts and very angry at her husband, as he left with his mistress for the US. The wife will not surrender the manuscripts easily.
MATURE THEMES, MATURE LANGUAGE, NUDITY, STRONG SEXUAL CONTENT

Film: 112 minutes

Director: Irena Pavlásková

Production countries: Czech Republic, Slovakia

Year: 2019