In person screening|Q&A

Mustafa and his wife Salwa live 200 meters apart in villages separated by the wall. One day he gets a call every parent dreads: his son has had an accident. Rushing to cross the Israeli checkpoint, Mustafa is denied on a technicality. But a father’s love won”t give up and he will do anything to reach his son. A 200 meter distance becomes a 200 kilometer odyssey, as Mustafa, left with no choice, attempts to smuggle himself to the other side of the wall.

Length: 96 minutes

Cast: Ali Suliman

Director: Ameen Nayfeh

Writer: Ameen Nayfeh

Screening will be accompanied by a Q&A.

Q&A with director Ameen Nayfeh will play immediately after the film in-theater and be available as bonus content for virtual participants.

For most of his adult life, Saul Bellow was the most acclaimed novelist in America and winner of, among other awards, the Nobel Prize in Literature, three National Book Awards, and the Pulitzer Prize. The Adventures of Saul Bellow is the first-ever documentary film on Saul Bellow, the man described by critic James Wood as the ”greatest of American prose stylists in the 20th century.” Marking the centennial of his birth and the tenth anniversary of his death, this film features original interviews with Bellow”s family, close friends, and writers inspired by him, including Martin Amis and A. B. Yehoshua. Bellow”s revolutionary impact on American literature is examined, as are his many identities as a writer, polemicist, ”serial husband,” father, Chicagoan, Jew, and American. The film highlights a previously underestimated element of Bellow”s life and work: his humor. Bellow”s satire and scalding wit reflected his joy and commitment to life, but also his belief that the world was marked by disorder and unruliness.

Length:  86 minutes

Director: Asaf Galay

Presentation partner:

Screening will be accompanied by a Q&A.

Q&A with director Asaf Galay will play immediately after the film in-theater and be available as bonus content for virtual participants.

Boris Schatz left two of Israel’s most important institutions – The Israel Museum and The Bezalel Art Academy – as his legacy, along with an endless collection of important, seminal works of art. His life ended while gathering donations for Bezalel, then on the brink of bankruptcy, without ever reaping the fruits of his labor. Another chapter of his biography seems to have disappeared – the kidnapping of his daughter, Angelica, by her mother who had fallen in love with one of his students. This was an event that became crucial to the Israeli art world, but also to Angelica’s life. The discovery of a chain of letters in the Zionist Archives, along with a roll of paintings in an attic, send the film’s director, Angelica’s great-grandson, to investigate Boris and Angelica’s tragic relationship, forever baring the revengeful seal of her father and his new family.

Length:  75 minutes

Director: Dan Pe’er

Screening will be accompanied by a Q&A.

Q&A with director Dan Pe’er will play immediately after the film in-theater and be available as bonus content for virtual participants.

The film brings to light, as an historical scoop, the Yugoslav Holocaust which resulted in the slaying of 85% of the Yugoslav glorious Jewish community who did not suffer any form of discrimination. Stella, a young Israeli born in Yugoslavia researches the nature of the extermination of Jews, the part of the Germans, and the part played by the various Yugoslav nationalities in the massacre. Parallel, Stella is exploring what was the fate of her great grandfather who saved Jews during the war. Yugoslavia”s beautiful scenery provides a dramatic contrast to the horrible deeds performed on its soil.

Length: 74 minutes

Director: Nitza Gonen

Screening will be accompanied by a Q&A.

Q&A with director Nitza Gonen will play immediately after the film in-theater and be available as bonus content for virtual participants.

Roman Cudakowski, for friends – Cudak – plays in a band performing at weddings and city events. During the occupation, the musician is not doing well. He can make some extra money by performing for the Germans, who simply cannot imagine a musical band without a fiddler. Cudak decides to sneak a talented musician, Szymon Akerman, out of the ghetto, even though before the war they did not see eye to eye. In this new reality surrounding them, they find they need each other. Cudak makes money by playing with Akerman, who in turn gets to live. One day Roman decides to aid the fiddler by rescuing him and his family from the ghetto and hiding them in his home risking his life.

Length: 82 minutes

Cast: Andrzej Kłak

Director: Anna Kazejak

Writer: Marek Kreutz

Presentation partners:

Screening will be accompanied by a Q&A.

Q&A with director Anna Kazejak will play immediately after the film in-theater and be available as bonus content for virtual participants.

In a Syrian border village in the early 80’s, little Sero attends school for the first time. A new teacher has arrived with the goal of making strapping Panarabic comrades out of the Kurdish children. To enable paradise to come to earth, he uses the rod to forbid the Kurdish language, orders the veneration of Assad and preaches hate of the Zionist enemy- the Jews. The lessons upset and confuse Sero because his long-time neighbors are a lovable Jewish family. With a fine sense of humor and satire, the film depicts a childhood which manages to find light moments between dictatorship and dark drama. Little Sero gets involved in dangerous pranks with his friends, and dreams of having a television so he can finally watch cartoons. But he also experiences how the adults around him are increasingly crushed by the despotism, violence and nationalism which surround them. The film was inspired by the director’s personal experiences, and so his bitter-sweet memories connect the Syrian tragedy to the present.

Length: 124 minutes

Cast: Jay Abdo

Director: Mano Khalil

Screening will be accompanied by a Q&A.

Q&A with director Mano Khalil will play immediately after the film in-theater and be available as bonus content for virtual participants.

Based on a true story. In 1945, a group of Jewish holocaust survivors planned to poison the water system in Germany, Killing back 6 million Germans. The film tells the dangerous and bold secret-operation which was called – Plan A.

Based on the book “Nakam“ by Prof. Dina Porat, the chief Historian of “Yad Va shem.“

Nudity and violence.

Length: 109 minutes

Cast: Michael Aloni

Director: Doron Paz and Yoav Paz

Writer: Doron Paz and Yoav Paz

Screening will be accompanied by a Q&A.

Q&A with directors Doron Paz and Yoav Paz will play immediately after the film in-theater and be available as bonus content for virtual participants.

The Red Orchestra, a most important resistance net in Nazi-Germany, stole Hitler’s plans for the invasion of the Soviet-Union. Via an espionage group of Jewish communists in Brussels they radioed it to the Soviets. After locating their transmitters, Hitler set off a deadly hunt. Postwar, the ex-Gestapo henchmen were courted by Western intelligence services, Propaganda distorted the legacy of the Red Orchestra. Two large-scale films were launched in East and West – each merely partly truthful. Excerpts from both films are ‘reunited’ in this documentary film to tell the complete story. Descendants in Berlin, Brussels, Paris and Jerusalem contribute to this first comprehensive film of the defamed resistance network.

Length: 120 minutes

Cast: Yehudi Kafri

Director: Carl-Ludwig Rettinger

Writer: Carl-Ludwig Rettinger

Screening will be accompanied by a Q&A.

Q&A with director Carl-Ludwig Rettinger will play immediately after the film in-theater and be available as bonus content for virtual participants.

A mix of longer shorts, both documentaries and fiction:

• Long Distance (Israel, 20 mins.)
  Rachel is losing her sight to the point she can”t even manage doing the smallest daily functions, like dialing the phone. She opens her door to passing by strangers, on a tiny but significant journey, to reach out to her daughter, on the other side of the world.
• Taking Steps (Israel, 22 mins.)
  Stav, newly married, is about to fly abroad with her husband for the mountain trek of his dreams. When she breaks her foot a week before they are due to leave, the couple must settle for a much less glamorous trip. But for Stav at least, it”s a journey that will allow her to examine for the first time ever, her needs and desires within the relationship.
• Image of Victory (Israel, 29 mins.)
  July 2014. Israel is at war in Gaza. Uri, an Israeli soldier, is shot and wounded. At the hospital, he is welcomed as a hero. Between treatments and visits from high-profile generals and celebrities, Uri and his family reckon with his new status. An insider’s look at how war as a state-of-mind is shaping Israeli society.
• Majesty and Tenderness (USA, 28 mins.) WORLD PREMIERE
  Majesty and Tenderness: The Art of Maurice Schmidt is a rare glimpse into the genius of a very unusual Texas artist who finds the majesty of beauty in everything. His artistic vision of over seventy prolific years, peers through a unique lens of Judaism, claiming that over decades of study, he has become “one with the Torah”. As an articulate academician, Maurice Schmidt candidly describes how his spiritual interpretations become a congruent mastery of beautiful craftsmanship and pure visceral expression that plays out seamlessly through his powerfully dynamic portrayals of daily life, agricultural landscapes and religious subjects.

Program length:  99 minutes

Screening will be accompanied by a Q&A.

Live in-person Q&A with director Vanessa Reiser of Majesty and Tenderness will play immediately after the film in-theater.

By day, Leonardo teaches salsa to tourists but has dreams of making it as a classical dancer. His girlfriend Sara is an ambitious lawyer but has little opportunity in their lively but poor area of Havana. Together they devise a plan: Leonardo will seduce one of the lonely women in his dance class for immigration papers and a shot at a new life for them both. Fresh from a disastrous marriage, Iranian-Jewish Nasim comes to Cuba to celebrate her new found freedom but quickly becomes ensnared in Leonardo and Sara’s web when she falls for him and arranges for his arrival. When Leonardo touches down in a frigid Montreal winter, he hustles to find work to bring over his true love but is met with cold indifference and an increasingly complicated relationship with both Nasim and Sara. Upon Sara’s arrival in Montreal, Leonardo’s lies threaten to derail their plan, yet Nasim is harboring secrets of her own. A visually striking, poetic exploration of the religious and personal differences at the heart of a cross-cultural relationship.

Adult language, adult situations, brief nudity.

Cast: Yonah Acosta Gonzalez

Director: Kaveh Nabatian

Writer: Kaveh Nabatian

Screening will be accompanied by a Q&A.

Q&A with Director Kaveh Nabatian will play immediately after the film in-theater and be available as bonus content for virtual participants.