J. Special Offer | SFJFF38: July 19

Love, Gilda

Gilda Radner was an instant sensation when she burst onto the scene with her brilliant, fearless and uproarious SNL performances, and when she died after an epic battle with ovarian cancer, a piece of us left with her. SFJFF38 is thrilled to open the Festival with this endearing, exuberant and intimate tribute that uses rare personal recordings, clear-eyed journal entries and interviews with SNL cast members to bring Radner back into our lives.

Closing Night: Sammy Davis, Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me

It’s hard to imagine a more talented and groundbreaking performer who led a more complicated and contradictory life than Sammy Davis Jr. Featuring excerpts from his exhilarating performances and star-studded interviews, director Sam Pollard’s riveting documentary presents a very full and very human portrait of this complex, courageous and conflicted man.

FOE Award: Liz Garbus - The Fourth Estate

Prolific documentarian Liz Garbus has been at the forefront of nonfiction filmmaking for decades. From The Farm: Angola, USA to Bobby Fischer Against the World (SFJFF 2011), What Happened, Miss Simone?, and now with The Fourth Estate, her latest documentary about The New York Times' coverage of the Trump Administration's first hundred days, the work of this two-time Academy Award nominee, Peabody winner and Emmy winner is a true embodiment of the Freedom of Expression Award.

To Dust

CENTERPIECE NARRATIVE. A Hasidic cantor (Géza Röhrig) and an under-equipped biology professor (Matthew Broderick) become blasphemously obsessed with the process of a human body’s decay. What follows are illicit dives into anatomy textbooks, outlandish homemade experiments, a road trip to a body farm, and the ever-lurking prospect of dybbuk possession. Röhrig and Broderick are an unholy match made in deadpan heaven as they embark on this increasingly literal journey into the underground.

The Waldheim Waltz

CENTERPIECE DOCUMENTARY. In 1986 former United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim launched an election bid to become Austria’s president. But revelations suddenly surfaced that Waldheim had been a German army officer suspiciously close to Nazi wartime atrocities in the Balkans. A stunning chronicle of the heated race and its foreshadow of populist, right-wing demagogues from Donald Trump to Austria’s Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache.

Satan & Adam

LOCAL SPOTLIGHT. On a street in Harlem in 1986, a young blond-haired Jewish kid who plays a first-rate blues harmonic struck up a musical friendship with a street musician named Sterling Magee, who calls himself Mr. Satan. The duo puts together an act that leads to music festivals and a successful record. Just as quickly, the act crashes when Satan mysteriously disappears. This documentary captures a fascinating journey of friendship, heartbreak and the transformative power of the blues.

The Oslo Diaries

EAST BAY OPENING NIGHT. In 1992, with Israeli-Palestinian relations at a low and official communication suspended, an unlikely group of negotiators—two Israeli professors and three PLO members—met secretly in Norway. Faced with a Palestinian uprising in the West Bank, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin needed a new direction. The political drama with all its intrigue, suspicion and discord is told through the actual diaries of the negotiators and the long-discarded footage of the actual Oslo negotiations.

Who Will Write Our History

PALO ALTO OPENING NIGHT. In the Warsaw Ghetto, a group of activists secretly collected eyewitness accounts, diaries and photographs that told the history of the war from the perspective of the Jews. These archives are now finally revealed to the world. Told through a combination of archival footage, photographs and masterful reenactments, the film is a stirring paean to these prescient individuals and a celebration of their optimism, persistence and grit.

The City Without Jews (with live score)

The economy in mythical Utopia is in the dumpster, and who is blamed? The usual scapegoat: the Jews. After the Jews are expelled, however, the economy, missing their invaluable participation, actually takes a turn for the worse, and Utopia begs them to come back. This 1924 silent Austrian satire is an object lesson in the absurdity of such thinking, and an unwitting prediction of the horrific events in Europe ten years later.

Budapest Noir

Budapest, 1936. As the specter of the Third Reich rises beyond the Hungarian border, a newspaper reporter becomes obsessed with the mysterious death of a young woman. His dogged pursuit of her identity draws him into the most craven and corrupt corners of the city, revealing buried family secrets and burgeoning social terror. A spellbinding detective story filled with actual hardboiled history.

93Queen

Borough Park, Brooklyn is home to the country’s largest ultraorthodox Jewish community, one guided by conservative principles, including those dictating that women never engage in physical contact with non-familial men. Yet, in medical emergencies, it is the men of Hatzolah Emergency Medical Service who care for women. A mother of six, a lawyer and a tornado-like force, Rachel “Ruchie” Freier and her crew of dutiful yet revolutionary women are ready to change this.

Commandments

After heisting a priceless mezuzah, wily thief Amram needs a place to hide, a place no one would ever suspect. He lands in just the spot in a company of Orthodox Jews undergoing basic training for the Israeli army. Our anti-hero (or is it hero?) must now earn the trust of his comrades and pass basic training, all the while keeping his secret past hidden, as well as the stolen loot.

Etgar Keret: Based on a True Story

Dutch filmmakers Stephane Kaas and Rutger Lemm create a delightfully surrealistic documentary about the beloved Israeli writer and humorist. Weaving animation, live action and interviews, the film takes us deep into the psyche of Keret, a son of Holocaust survivors, whose fiction explores the absurdities of daily life. Like friends Ira Glass and Jonathan Safran Foer, you’ll be charmed by Keret and be left with an intense desire to read (or reread) his stories.

The Mossad

Considered one of the elite intelligence agencies in the world, the Mossad was created in 1949 as an insurance policy to defend the state of Israel. Utilizing intimate interviews, first person accounts, startling archival photographs and news footage, some leading figures in Israel’s intelligence community reveal their successes, failures and near misses. Although many were reluctant to discuss highly sensitive topics with the media, the cold calculations of their secret operations gradually unfold.

The Invisibles

When Berlin was declared “Judenfrei” (officially “free of Jews”) in 1943, there were still 7,000 Jews secretly residing in the capital of the Third Reich. They survived by hiding in attics, basements, warehouses and sometimes disguised in plain view walking among their fellow Germans. The Invisibles is a gripping documentary/narrative hybrid about the inspiring resourcefulness, resiliency and courage shown by four young adults living in dire conditions with an uncertain future.

Wajib

Shadi, an architect who lives in Italy, returns to Nazareth for the wedding of his sister. He helps his father, Abu Shadi (renowned actor Mohammed Bakri), deliver 340 wedding invitations by hand, according to Palestinian custom. When Abu Shadi wants to invite a Jewish friend who Shadi believes is part of Israeli military intelligence, we see the conflict through the eyes of two different generations of Palestinians in this superbly acted film.

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