Festival Archives - 2008

Summary:
Need your kitchen koshered? Now? Rabbi Sholtiel Lebovic is your man. 888-Go-Kosher follows a day in the life of New York’s only rapid- response kitchen koshering service. Operating out of his office in Brooklyn, Rabbi Lebovic helps those in need, answering calls and snapping into action with his full-service team to kosher kitchens across the New York area. 888-Go-Kosher offers a... more details »

Genre: Short Documentary
Run time: 11

Summary:
A sweeping epic about gay life in Vichy France. Jean ( Jeremie Rainier) and his lover Phillipe ( Bruno Tedeschi) take in Jean’s Jewish friend Sara ( Louise Minot) after her family are murdered by the Gestapo. Despite the ever present danger of discovery the trio do their best to lead a normal life as a “family” until Jean’s brother Jacques ( Nicholas Gob) , a Nazi... more details »

Genre: Drama
Run time: 102

Summary:
In 1943, while bombs are falling on Berlin and the Gestapo is purging the city of Jews, a dangerous love affair blossoms between two women.  One of them, Lily Wust (Juliane Kohler), married to a German soldier on active duty and mother of four sons, is the perfect German hausfrau.  At first fascinated and confused, she is slowly seduced by Felice Schragenheim (Maria Schrader), a Jewish... more details »

Genre: Drama
Run time: 125

Summary:
Newly commissioned SS Lieutenant and respected civilian chemist Kurt Gerstein discovers that the Zyklon B pellets he has developed to disinfect soldiers' drinking water are being used to gas interred Jews by the thousands. Recruited to help streamline the death camp process by a team of SS officers, Gerstein secretly approaches the Swedish Consulate, the German Protestant community, and finally... more details »

Genre: Drama
Run time: 130

Summary:
Produced and directed by Dianne Crespo and Stephan C. Schaefer this film starring Zoe Lister Jones as Rachel, a 22 year old orthodox Jew and Francis Benhamou as Nasira, a Syrian born Muslim, is the story of two devout Brooklyn school teachers who come together after a confrontation with a student in Nasira’s class and find common ground as each sets off down the path to an arranged... more details »

Genre: Drama
Run time: 90

Summary:
“Ismael ( Roschdy Zem , also the director of this film) and Clara ( Cecile De France - French winner of the Etoile D’Or for Best Actress and nominated for a Cesar for her highly acclaimed role in Avenue Montaigne) are two French thirty something happily enjoying their four year romance. It means nothing to them that Ismael is Muslim and Clara a Jewess because both are non-practicing.... more details »

Genre: Comedy Drama
Run time: 88

Summary:
Children of the first kibbutzim in Israel were born in the early 20th century to youthful parents, full of hope. They have been called "Children of the Sun," because they were considered children of the "Sun of Nations" Revolution in Israel. Born into a utopia, they were destined to become "new citizens" for the common good and a life of equality. Children of the Sun features rare footage shot at... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 70

Summary:
This touching story about the son of Holocaust survivors is written and directed by the son of survivors and set in Tel Aviv in the early 1960's. Ten year old Hilik knows he and his brother's goal in life - to make his parents happy and compensate for the grief they both suffered in the Holocaust. The fragile equilibrium of the new life Rivka and Moishe have forged for themselves and their sons... more details »

Genre: Drama
Run time: 86

Summary:
This is the amazing and inspiring story of the renowned pianist Alice Sommers now 104 years old and living in London. However, before coming to London, Ms Sommers lived through the major events of the twentieth century. She was brought up in Prague, educated in German culture, lived and worked in Israel for 37 years before moving to London. She experienced and witnessed World War I, World War II,... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 73

Summary:
An attempt to confront the painful events of the year 1968 - the outbreak of anti-Semitic hysteria that resulted in many citizens of Jewish origin leaving Poland. For 20 years emigrants have been meeting in Israeli resort of Ashkelon by the Mediterranean Sea. Forty years have passed since they left, yet Poland is still present in their homes. Gdanski Railway Station - from which they departed -... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 52

Summary:
A unique story, told here for the first time. Hanna Mandelberger, a 12 year old girl who fled the ghetto, roams the streets of Warsaw looking for something to eat. Out of nowhere, a light is shining; Hanna barely makes it to a doorstep before collapsing. Hanna will eventually tell the Mother Superior she is a Polish Catholic, 15 years old, from the City of Lodz . At that very moment, Hanna... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 65

Summary:
It is the final weeks of World War II.  His Majesty's Jewish Brigade - the only all-Jewish fighting unit in the war - goes into combat against the hated Nazis...and comes away victorious.   For three years the Jews of Palestine had asked the British Government for permission to form a Jewish unit.  Finally, in 1944, Churchill overrode the objections of the War Office and... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 85

Summary:
In the early 1990s, a chance meeting between Conductor and pianist, Daniel Barenboim, and the late Palestinian-born writer and Columbia University professor, Edward Said, resulted in a unique friendship that had both political and musical repercussions. Their meeting led to Barenboim's first concert in the West Bank and to the creation of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which involved talented... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 90

Summary:
Through a personal lens, the film explores the Jewish Community of Kingston, Jamaica, their little-known history and the vibrant and diverse characters who remain a part of the congregation today. more details »

Genre: Short Documentary
Run time: 13

Summary:
A group of men in a variety store in Harbin, China candidly discuss a foreigner with a camera amongst them, assuming that she doesn't understand Chinese and forgetting that her camera is recording them all the while. Later in Kaifeng, miles to the south, the woman noses her camera into peoples homes, searching for traces of the city's thousand -year old Jewish settlement while her guide attempts... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 47

Summary:
Author Holly-Jane Rahlens based the screenplay for this coming-of-age story on her novel, Prince William, Maximillian Minsky and Me, which received the German Award for Young People's Literature in 2003. Nelly Sue Edelmeister is a skinny 13-year-old living in Berlin with her German Christian father and American Jewish mother. Though her mom pushes her to practice for her fast approaching Bat... more details »

Genre: Drama
Run time: 94

Summary:
This touching comic drama centers around Miri, a twice-widowed El Al flight attendant, whose life has been crumbling around her for years. She wants nothing more than to be left alone, but things change when her Chinese housekeeper asks Miri to watch her son for an hour and never comes back. Despite the language barrier, Miri tries to reunite the boy she dubs "Noodle" with his mother. Noodle is a... more details »

Genre: Comedy Drama
Run time: 100

Summary:
Paper Dolls  explores changing patterns of global immigration and expanding notions of family through the prism of a community of Filipino transvestites who live illegally in Israel. Cast out by their families because of their sexual and gender preferences, they work 6 days a week as live-in, 24 hour a day care givers (and in many cases as surrogate children) for elderly orthodox Jewish men,... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 84

Summary:
This engrossing, intimate, often humorous and tender documentary film, introduces Lior Liebling, also called "the little rebbe." Lior has Down syndrome, and has spent his entire life praying with utter abandon. Is he a "spiritual genius" as many around him say, or simply the vessel that contains everyone's unfulfilled wishes and expectations? Lior - whose name means "my light" - lost his mother... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 87

Summary:
Germany, September 1991.  A group of skinheads have attacked a hostel occupied by foreign asylum seekers.  After the attack, Michael Rosenzweig, who had been at the hostel with his Vietnamese girlfriend, is seen in the vicinity firing a handgun.  That same night, a Neo-Nazi leader is found shot dead.  Despite not being able to remember the events of the night, Rosenzweig is... more details »

Genre: Drama
Run time: 90

Summary:
This documentary, directed by Slawomir Grundberg and written by Robert Podgursky, two Polish Jews, tells the story of how Stalin, beating Hitler to the punch, deported 200,000 Polish Jews in 1940 from Russian occupied eastern Poland to forced labor settlements in the Soviet interior thereby unknowingly and unintentionally saving them from Hitler's final solution which resulted in the death of... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 81

Summary:
It was in the second half of 1800 that Jews, from the Arab peninsula south and in large part from Aden, victims of repeated pogroms, went to the western coasts of the Red Sea an towards Massawa in particular. They were attracted by prospects of urbanization and commercial development that the newborn Italian colony d'eritrea seemed to promise. In the early 1900's other Jews moved to  Asmara,... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 31

Summary:
This riotous British coming-of-age comedy is set in the summer of '66, and England is about to be consumed by World Cup Fever. For 12 year-old Bernie though, the biggest day of his life is looming: his Bar Mitzvah, and the day he becomes a man. However, Bernie's family are increasingly distracted by the threat of losing their business and the scale of Bernie's Bar Mitzvah diminishes daily. Worst... more details »

Genre: Comedy
Run time: 90

Summary:
This heart warming romantic tale of inopportune love between Tamar, a witty, beautiful pastry baker and the oldest of three daughters in a Jewish-Moroccan family, and her youngest sister's fiancée, is set against the backdrop of a small agricultural village in northern Israel. On the day of the middle-sister's wedding, Maya, the youngest, arrives at the celebration with her fiancé,... more details »

Genre: Romantic Comedy
Run time: 97

Summary:
Jurek lives in Tel Aviv, Stella - in Boston. They met in 1936 in Otwock and fell in love from the first sight. They were separated by the war - Jurek found himself in Auschwitz, Stella was sent to work in Germany. The last letter from Stella came in 1945. After the war he had spent a long time looking for her until he found out that she got married. Then he met Nora. They lived together for 57... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 45

Summary:
A Jewxploitation spoof in the vein of Shaft  and Austin Powers.  Mordechai (Goldberg), a bad-ass Orthodox Jew, is enlisted by the Jewish Justice League when it discovers that Santa's psychotic son (Andy Dick) has plans to eradicate Hanukkah as part of a nefarious scheme to be the only holiday icon at winter time. The Hammer joins forces with Esther (Greer), the gorgeous and dangerous... more details »

Genre: Comedy
Run time: 86

Summary:
"In this powerful police drama, Danny Breznitz ( played intensely by Smil Ben-Ari) is a detective in the Tel Aviv police. He is hospitalized following a near fatal car accident. His relationship with his mistress, Eva, early 30s, is falling apart, and his obsession with her is pushing her even further away. Breznitz is married to Ruthie, who loves him. Their marriage is childless. They live in... more details »

Genre: Crime Thriller
Run time: 81

Summary:
Nominated for nine Israeli Academy Awards, Three Mothers is the multigenerational saga of beautiful triplets, Flora, Yasmin and Rose Hakim. Inspired by director Dina Zvi-Riklis' real-life mother, a triplet, this magnificent and moving family saga traces the lives and loves of three Egyptian-Jewish girls born in 1942 in Alexandria, Egypt, to privileged Jewish parents who named them after flowers... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 106

Summary:
Shot in the USA, Europe  and in  the Mediterranean, and using recently discovered archives,  this unforgettable film brilliantly recounts the dramatic and fascinating story of one of the strangest war adventure stories of the post world war period. It tells the story of how in 1947 Paul Kaye and twenty six other American volunteers got involved in trying to break the British... more details »

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 60

Summary:
This Canada/Morocco co-production is a bittersweet story set during the Jewish exodus from Morocco in the 60s shortly after the country obtained its independence from France. Fearing uncertainty thousands of Moroccan Jews started leaving their homeland for Israel and other countries in search of better life. When Mustapha, the manager of the only bar in the town of Bejjad, finds out that the... more details »

Genre: Drama
Run time: 90

Summary:
Miki Berkowitz is a pretty 17-year-old, self-confident, promising basketball player. When she moves to a new city with her mom, she wants to join the all-male basketball team at her new school. The coach doesn't want a girl on the team and the captain is threatened by her abilities. Oren Shtiner, playing himself as the legendary and now disabled 40-year-old ex-captain of the Maccabi Tel-Aviv... more details »

Genre: Drama
Run time: 76