Virtual screening

In 1996, NASA astronaut Dr. Jeff Hoffman brought a small Torah scroll on board Space Shuttle Columbia. On Shabbat, while orbiting Earth, he read from the book of Genesis, “In the beginning God created heaven and the earth.” This is a story about inspiration, communities, and a man’s journey. A story of how family, educators, scientific and religious communities achieve great things and bring our identity to new realms.

Length: 25 minutes

Director: Rob Cooper

For more information about this project, see spacetorahproject.com 

Film made by Verissima Productions.

At the beginning of the 20th century, an epidemic decimated the dwellers of a small Jewish village. Their healer, Absalom, cannot do anything about it, science is at a cul-de-sac. When the half-orphaned Rifka also catches the disease, the villagers suddenly feel they have to do something for the child and for themselves. They turn towards faith and God for help. Can faith help? Is it possible to deviate from dogmas, and bargain with the Creator, and is the Creator willing to bargain with them?
Brief nudity.

Length: 17 minutes

Cast: Dorka Merenyi, Mari Nagy, György Gazsó, Péter Scherer, Gábor Krausz, Kata Kuna

Director: David Bodrogi

Writer: David Bodrogi

The year 5781 is off to a rough start for Xander Hazlewood, as his mother and the family Rabbi have some news that won’t make Xander’s Shabbat challah go down very well.

Length: 6 minutes

Director: Billy Kent

Xander the Magnificent recently booked the Feldstein kid’s Zoom Bar mitzvah and is psyched to practice his virtual magic act for his mom, Sabrina. Unfortunately, she has her own sleight-of-hand trick to perform.

Director: Billy Kent

Few rights in Judaism are as important as the Brit Milah – the circumcision. James and his wife Lola, a recent convert, live in a community without any Mohel’s, and after celebrating the birth of their first son have to fly one in to perform the ceremony. Family expectations and financial strain force James to confront his ideology, and the realities of maintaining old traditions in a modern world.

Length: 14 minutes

Cast: Daniel Maslany, Kaelen Ohm, Sam Rosenthal, Sherry Smith, Bob Mann, Joanne Miller, Breton McKay

Director: Charles Wahl

Writer: Charles Wahl

The Mohel trailer.

‘I want to make a film about women’ is a speculative documentary love letter to Russian constructivist women. The new Soviet Union of the 1920s championed equality for women and great innovation in the creative arts. Until it didn”t. Looking back at that time, history remembers the men who were celebrated and then shut down. But women were there, too, and they were influential, powerful and brilliant. ‘I want to make a film about women’ gazes in to a creative communal kitchen and watches these women transform it into a workshop, then a stage set, then a film, all the while juggling noisy men and the wolves of history. It imagines what the revolutionary women artists of the 1920s said, what they did, and what they might have created had it not been for Stalin”s suppression.

Length: 12 minutes

Cast: Victoria Haralabidou, Liliya May, Inga Romantsova, Violette Ayad, Ever Sliter, Nadia Zwecker, Tug Dumbly and Richard James Allen

Director: Karen Pearlman

Writer: Karen Pearlman

This event is supported, in part, by:

 

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.

Adult language.

Length: 29 minutes

Director: Adi Mishnayot

Ladino, the old Sephardic Jewish language, is in great danger of being extinct. In Serbia, there are only two surviving native speakers: two old ladies. They fight to save their language.

Length:  8 minutes

Director: Laurent Rouy

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.

Length: 20 minutes

Cast: Leora Rivlin, Uri Gavriel, Nir di-nur, Erez Kahana, Nathchayanit Elberg.

Director: Or Sinai

Writer: Or Sinai

Long Distance trailer.

At a banquet hall in Israel, at the height of a war, Adam Weizmann’s Bar Mitzvah party turns into a glorious catastrophe. On the cusp of manhood—and on the verge of a nervous breakdown—Adam takes a crucial step toward coming to terms with his sexuality.

Adult language, sexual content, mature themes.

Length: 25 minutes

Cast: Amit Rahav, Amir Khoury, Maya Dagan, Yaniv Biton, Ruby Porat Shoval, Peter Knoller, Maayan Selektar

Director: Eli Zuzovsky

Writer: Eli Zuzovsky

Mazel Tov trailer.

Presentation partner: