Festival Archives - 2009

Summary:
Set in Nazi occupied France in 1942, A Time for Honor deals with friendship and betrayal amongst the French population.  The film stars Daniel Russo as Edouard and Martin Lamotte as Lucas, childhood friends and fellow police officers.  When Nazi officials demand that the local police force round up the Jewish population, each character reacts differently,... more details »

Genre: Narrative
Run time: 100 minutes

Summary:
This smartly written, superbly acted television drama series was the most watched program in Israeli television history and won seven Ophir Awards, the Israeli equivalent of the Emmys.  A Touch Away is a contemporary Romeo and Juliet story which centres on two neighbouring families in the Orthodox suburb of Bnei Barak: one ultra orthodox and the other secular Russian. Beautiful, religious... more details »

Genre: Narrative
Run time: 4 x 38 minutes

Summary:
This hit Israeli comedy series was created by Sayed Kashua, a 32-year-old Israeli-born Palestinian journalist,  It focuses on Amjad, a Palestinian journalist and Israeli citizen in search of his identity as he seeks higher status in the society into which he was born.  Poking fun at the cultural divide, Kashua and his characters play on religious, cultural and political differences to... more details »

Genre: Narrative
Run time: 30 minutes episodes

Summary:
Bettina Goering, grand niece of Herman Goering, is haunted by the dark legacy of her family's involvement with the Nazi party. In an attempt to exorcise her overwhelming sense of vicarious guilt, she seeks out second generation survivor Ruth Rich, an artist, who is harbouring her own extraordinary pain of the loss of her family during the Holocaust. Intense, provocative and moving,... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 52 minutes

Summary:
The setting for this moving film is a colony of Jewish immigrants in Entre Riso Province, Argentina, at the end of the 19th century.  Gertrudis is born an ugly baby, grows into an unattractive child and becomes an almost invisible and insignificant woman. Ignored by all, Gertrudis opens her eyes to the small joys in life and creates her own universe. Years later, when she is married with... more details »

Genre: Narrative
Run time: 85 minutes

Summary:
Rivki Cohen, a young ultra-orthodox woman, opens the door for a strange man that comes for Tsedaka (charity). She is raped. Now she is awaiting the rabbinical court’s decision whether her husband, Motle, must divorce her. According to the Jewish Halacha, 'A Cohen’s wife who is raped is forbidden to her husband'. more details »

Genre: Narrative
Run time: 24 minutes

Summary:
This film looks at the life of Alfred Dreyfus who was wrongfully convicted of treason and imprisoned on Devil's Island off the coast of French Guyana in 1894. Over the next 11 years, he would be tried and found guilty a second time before his eventual exoneration. The Dreyfus Affair, one of history's most notorious cases of criminal injustice and anti-semitism, split French public opinion and... more details »

Genre: Documentary Drama
Run time: 17 minutes

Summary:
Invited by her father with whom she has had virtually no contact, Emilia, a Mexican photographer, travels to Chile full of fear and insecurity.  There she meets her extended family who welcome her with equal measures of love and hypocrisy.  Isidoro, her father, shows Emilia a world she never understood and helps her come to terms with the anger she has felt towards him.  A... more details »

Genre: Narrative
Run time: 100 minutes

Summary:
Fiestaremos! presents the inspiring story of musician, singer and performer Judy Frankel whose work with many Sephardic communities helped to preserve and extend  the rich musical tradition of these people. Interviews with Judy are combined with footage of her close ties with Sephardic individuals, recordings of her songs and insights on this important legacy. The film gives the viewer an... more details »

Genre: Documentary Music
Run time: 30 minutes

Summary:
Four Seasons Lodge captures the final season of a community of Holocaust survivors who have summered together for close to 60 years in the Catskill Mountains. While the lodgers relive memories, some of the war, but mostly of their many summers together at the Lodge, they grapple with aging, illness and the likely demise of the place that has sustained them as a community for so long. Filled with... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 97 minutes

Summary:
This film is a moving parable about the demise of Zionism in Israel as exemplified by the kibbutz movement. A failed kibbutz in the Galilee Hills is abandoned by its residents but somehow a group of seniors gets left behind.  They awake in the Senior's Residence to discover they have been left to fend for themselves and are confronted by the new owner's bailiffs. The dilemma-what to do with... more details »

Genre: Narrative
Run time: 90 minutes

Summary:
An absorbing drama with farcical undertones, Gruber's Journey is based on the true story of an Italian journalist and his World War II experiences in the German-occupied Romanian city of Iasi. On his way to the front, Curzio Malaparte (Florin Piersic Jr.) is incapacitated by a severe allergy. Desperate for a cure, he is advised to seek out a Jewish doctor, Josef Gruber, who he hopes will... more details »

Genre: Narrative
Run time: 100 minutes

Summary:
What is the place of socialist, agricultural kibbutzim in a modern world driven by capitalism? This is the question faced by the kibbutzniks at HaZorea, a kibbutz in Northern Israel that is trapped in a stagnant state of debate over whether or not they want their kibbutz to stray from its founding socialist principles to a more ‘modern' form of settlement. By interviewing the kibbutz... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 72 minutes

Summary:
Esther Blueburger has thick glasses, parents who don't understand her, a pet duck and no friends at her private school. She and her twin brother are approaching their bar/bat mitzvah, a rite of passage that coincides with Esther's inner turmoil. On the road to greater self-awareness, Esther encounters kissing, sex, class differences, questions of loyalty and an indestructible urge to be herself.... more details »

Genre: Narrative
Run time: 103 minutes

Summary:
 In an effort to rescue a young Russian prostitute from her Georgian pimp, a group of unlikely travel mates are accidentally thrown together in a madcap romp across Israel. Their adventure unifies this disparate group who range from ultra Orthodox to secular and includes a visiting French civil servant who is suffering from the "Jerusalem Syndrome" and believes he is the Prophet... more details »

Genre: Narrative
Run time: 93 minutes

Summary:
A refreshing look at the constraints and opportunities for contemporary young women in Israel, but with a twist: seventeen year old model Duah Fares is a Druze Arab, not a Jew. With the help of her stunning looks and inner strength, as well as the support of an older mentor, Duah abandons her Arab milieu and the "Lady of All Arabs" Palestinian beauty contest, changes her name, and finds... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 56 minutes

Summary:
A poignant and heart-warming story about a young Argentinean girl whose mother dies and leaves her a series of letters designed to guide her daughter through the major transitions in her life: marriage, pregnancy and motherhood. The movie takes us from Argentina to Israel and Spain while Jenny endeavours to find love and grapples with the big questions of growing up. This is a bittersweet tale of... more details »

Genre: Narrative
Run time: 96 minutes

Summary:
A stunning documentary by Gemini Award-winning filmmaker Cyrus Sundar Singh that follows Canadian singer Ellen Gould Ventura on a journey of spiritual and musical discovery through Sephardic Jewish song. Ellen grew up in Canada knowing almost nothing about her family ancestry. She was a teenager before her mother explained that they were Sephardic Jews with roots in Spain. That revelation changed... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 46 minutes

Summary:
Menachem and Fred is the exceptional story of the reunion of Menachem Mayer and Fred Raymes, two Jewish brothers with German roots, who survived the Holocaust in a French orphanage and who took vastly different directions at the end of World War II. Each of them chose the polar opposites of Jewish survival – while Fred concealed his Jewish-German origin and became an American citizen,... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 90 minutes

Summary:
Israeli filmmaker David Ofek uses the actual persons involved to tell the story of a Romanian immigrant's transition in status from exploited guest worker to full citizen. He is then joined in Israel by his Christian family after he rediscovers his Jewish roots. The documentary cheekily underscores its unsettling contradictions by unfolding like a traditional Jewish fable while broaching... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 54 minutes

Summary:
A troubled teenager joins a racist skinhead gang, which necessarily estranges him from his black best friend and his own Jewish father in Skin.  Seventeen-year-old Frankie Epstein (a sympathetic Robert de Hoog) lives adrift in a working-class neighbourhood, listening to punk music and getting high with best friend Jeffrey (Juliann Ubbergen). His father (John Buijsman), deeply traumatized by... more details »

Genre: Narrative
Run time: 82 minutes

Summary:
This film chronicles the history of surfing in Israel.   It documents the journey of a group of outsiders, from fighting for their right to surf, to their ultimate participation in the European Championship.  The group was idolized by Israeli youth and set the tone in fashion and music as cultural icons in the late eighties. more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 50 minutes

Summary:
In celebration of the 100 year anniversary of the establishment of Tel Aviv, the film depicts the remarkable, moving and humorous story of the largest and most important city in Israel, the secular and youthful alternative to Jerusalem. Supported by in depth research and rare archival material, the film follows Tel Aviv from its inception as an unpretentious neighborhood on the outskirts of... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 120 minutes

Summary:
This romantic comedy is about a drifter wandering from shtetl to shtetl and surviving as a shoemaker and Purim shpieler - an entertainer. The film is a likable fantasy of a love triangle with the typical setting of a shtetl in Galicia as a backdrop. This film is one of the few films that portray shtetl life in an authentic manner. Our hero loves a girl of comparatively higher social standing.... more details »

Genre: Narrative
Run time: 90 minutes

Summary:
A journey into the mysterious life of Aris San, the Greek singer who arrived in Israel in 1957 and within five years became a megastar and a close friend of generals and politicians, including Moshe Dayan. Then began the rumors that Aris, the genius guitarist and playboy, was a spy.   Aris left Israel to conquer America where he opened a hot night club in Manhattan mingling with... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 75 minutes

Summary:
In a gripping piece of investigative journalism, an Argentinian journalist returns to his place of birth to embark upon a personal crusade. During his travels he seeks to unveil the truth behind the bare facts that obscured the investigation of the bombings of the Israeli Embassy and the Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  The documentary includes interviews with senior... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 55 minutes

Summary:
The Wedding Song is an extraordinary tale of a brittle and bittersweet friendship between two girls during the Nazi incursion into Tunis during World War II.  One girl is Jewish and the other, Muslim.  Their strong bond begins to fracture as they struggle with divisive and segregating Nazi propaganda.  However, as they witness the devastation of their war-torn village and overcome... more details »

Genre: Narrative
Run time: 100 minutes

Summary:
Elderly Holocaust survivor Warren Pickler is descending into mental and physical decay in his isolated home in the Catskills. Persuaded by his vociferous Israeli uncle to intervene, Warren's son Zak decides to pay a visit to his estranged father for Yom Kippur. The family gathering quickly spirals into a tumultuous drama as pieces of the family's dark wartime secret are unveiled. Gripping... more details »

Genre: Narrative
Run time: 91 minutes

Summary:
Elaine Weiss in unsatisfied with her life. Smothered by her job and her family, her journals are her only creative outlet. Deciding to take drastic action, she turns her hobby of journal writing into a career. Embracing her new found confidence, she begins to enjoy life and the literary scene, particularly the company of her attractive young editor. With professional success on the horizon,... more details »

Genre: Narrative
Run time: 90 minutes