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
A Borrowed Identity Read More »
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