Virtual screening

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

Watch our Q&A with Ram Loevy, director of THE DEAD OF JAFFA.

Due to popular demand, we are now able to offer our closing night drive-in movie, AULCIE, for virtual screening through Monday, November 16.

An outstanding evening of fun, socially distanced entertainment. includes food, drink, various pre-show entertainment elements, an award winning film, followed by a Q and A with the filmmaker – all in one ticket.

One of Israel’s greatest athletes captures the spirit of a nation while triumphing against the odds, in this crowd-pleasing biography of a basketball legend. Recruited from the courts of Harlem, Aulcie Perry joined Maccabi Tel Aviv in 1976, quickly established himself a leader, and helped defeat the heavily favored Soviets to give team Israel its first European Championship. He adopted a Hebrew name, converted to Judaism, and dated an Israeli model. But the dark side of fame led to a stunning downfall. Returning to Israel after time in prison, Aulcie shares his story of redemption, while electrifying game footage and insightful interviews complete this emotional profile of a superstar athlete who put Israeli basketball on the map.

MATURE LANGUAGE, DRUG USE

Want to get a basketball signed by Aulcie Perry and support Dani Menkin’s filmmaking?   See Hey Jude Productions website for more details.

Film: 72 minutes

Cast: Aulcie Perry

Director: Dani Menkin

Production countries:  USA and Israel

Year: 2020

Community partner:

In the summer of 2018, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art enlists Yotam Ottolenghi, the London-based Israeli chef and celebrated author of cookbooks Jerusalem and Plenty, to organize a food gala inspired by the Met exhibit “Visitors to Versailles.” In preparation for the event, Ottolenghi travels to the Palace of Versailles. At the landmark French site, the famed chef is possessed by a child-like curiosity, as he finds in Versailles a glimpse into the French Monarchy’s decadence.
And so Ottolenghi, with the help of pastry chefs (including “Cronut” maestro Dominique Ansel), positions The Met event as both an expression and critique of excess. Several centuries ago in Versailles, the royal family lived in public to help broadcast the country’s splendor and wealth. Ottolenghi fast-forwards to the advent of social media and finds a new aristocracy streaming their riches, food, and prosperity. In both eras, we see deep exclusion, longing for community, a patriarchal structure – and the same potential for revolution.

NOTE: Ticket for AJFF Q&A with filmmakers and chefs on Dec. 20 included.

Cast: Yotam Ottolenghi, Dominique Ansel, Ghaya Oliveira, Dinara Kasko, Sam Bompas, Janice Wong.

Director: Laura Gabbert

Set almost entirely in a Chinese restaurant, Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas is an offbeat, irreverent musical documentary that tells the story of a group of Jewish songwriters, including Irving Berlin, Mel Tormé, Jay Livingston, Ray Evans, Gloria Shayne Baker and Johnny Marks, who wrote the soundtrack to Christianity’s most musical holiday. It’s an amazing tale of immigrant outsiders who became irreplaceable players in pop culture’s mainstream – a generation of songwriters who found in Christmas the perfect holiday in which to imagine a better world, and for at least one day a year, make us believe in it.

Order up your favorite Chinese take out and chow down as you enjoy this entertaining and informative movie!

Cast: Ben Sidran, Jackie Mason, Mark Breslin, Rob Bowman, Ophira Eisenberg, and Robert Harris.

Director: Larry Weinstein

Writer: Jason Charters

Supported by:

Benefitting:

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

The LAJFF have a special event for this film on Monday, December 7:

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

A Latvian tragicomedy about a young artist who bears witness to the dramatic political upheavals of the Word War II era. As brutal regimes come and go, his country, his village, his people, and even his heart are swept up in the inexorable currents of history. The film shows the ultimate triumph of the human spirit in the face of systematic, institutional inhumanity. It tells the story through the eyes of a somewhat naive, yet inherently wise soul—a lowly sign-painter/artist. The sweeping backdrop of the complex history of serial totalitarian occupation makes the story topical today.
MATURE THEMES, NUDITY

Film: 114 minutes

Director: Viesturs Kairišs

Production countries: Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic

Year: 2020

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 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

“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