Virtual screening

”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

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

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

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

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

“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

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

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

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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

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