Film Archive | Jewish Film Institute

Exhibition Series

2020 Filmmakers in Residence
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Television Series

A Film Unfinished

Filmmaker Yael Hersonski discovers that the Warsaw Ghetto footage that we’ve seen in countless documentaries was actually staged by the Nazis using the actual Jewish inhabitants of the Ghetto as actors. A Film Unfinished is a rigorous and profound documentary that simultaneously exposes the perversity of Nazi propaganda, honors its victims and pays tribute to the resiliency of the filmmaker’s own grandmother and the other survivors of the Ghetto.

Finsterworld

Finsterworld presents a contemporary Germany darkened by history’s shadow. Over half a century removed from the Holocaust, the country’s citizens are as detached from their past as they are stifled by it. Existentialist angst reins supreme, and no one feels comfortable in his or her own skin. Absurdist at times and allegorical at others, Finsterworld asks how we can relate to those around us when our strongest bond is our detachment from our surroundings.

Fire At Will

When parents gather their four adult children over dinner to solidify the family will, the children's self-absorbed agendas send the conversation careening into chaos.

The Fire This Time

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First Born

A surprise phone call brings a rebellious young woman face to face with her religious family and conflicted past. Haifa International Film Festival Best Student Film winner.

First Convoy

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First Cousin Once Removed

Alan Berliner is known for creating original, personal and highly inventive documentaries that utilize home movies, found footage and probing interviews. In his new film the subject is his mother’s first cousin, poet Edwin Honig, who for the past several years has been living with Alzheimer’s. Berliner has chronicled his visits over many years to create a profound study of memory that is both playful and incisive. A gem from a master filmmaker.

The First Lady

Fearing for her life, Israeli transgender pioneer Efrat Tilma fled the country as a teenager. Now in her seventies and a celebrated activist, she must fight for her freedom once again, as the country spirals into political and social regression.

First Lesson in Peace

In First Lesson in Peace, a filmmaker and his wife are determined to send their children to a bilingual school for Jewish and Palestinian kids.

The First Time I Was Twenty

Hannah, 16, is smarter than her classmates and plays a mean upright bass. But in her conventional suburb in mid-1960s France, none of that counts. She’s not interested in dating, and the famous school jazz band insists on remaining all-male. Anchored by Look at Me star Marilou Berry, this is the witty, touching story of a talented misfit who is determined to go her own way.

The First Zionist Bunny

High-heeled, bikini-clad contestants compete for the coveted role of the first Israeli Playboy Channel hostess. The winner, Noga Shahar, an unassuming kibbutznik, agrees with Hugh Hefner that "the major sex organ in the body is the brain" and is a self-described "exact opposite of what you’d expect from a Playboy bunny." She’s sexy and smart, but is she smarter than the Playboy smoke-and-mirrors marketing machine, selling fantasies to a popculture-driven Israeli society?

Five Weddings and A Felony

Twentysomething Chicago filmmaker Josh Freed’s comic essay documents his real-life inability to commit to a serious relationship even after meeting the incredibly adorable and wise second-grade school teacher Paulina. When five close friends get married and his dad develops a life-threatening illness, Josh begins to question his own life choices in this freewheeling self-portrait that manages to be charming, galling, funny, cringe-inducing, and always compelling.

Five Years After the War

In this fantastical animated short, join Tim on his quest for his identity, and the place where he truly belongs. With a Jewish French mother and an absent Muslim Iraqi father, it’s no wonder that Tim feels a little lost.

The Flat

Already the winner of Israel’s top film prizes, this superb documentary thriller begins just after the death of the filmmaker’s 95-year-old grandmother. Sifting through a lifetime of accumulated possessions in her Tel Aviv apartment, Goldfinger makes an astonishing discovery: the deep friendship between his grandparents and Leopold von Mildenstein, the Nazi predecessor of Adolf Eichmann. The Flat is a complex, penetrating look at a different kind of Holocaust denial altogether. [MINIGUIDE 68/70]

Flawed

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Flipping Out

Verité filmmaker Yoav Shamir (Checkpoint, 5 Days) hangs out in India’s Himalayan foothills with some of the 30,000 young Israeli men and women who annually escape there, take drugs and often “flip out” after their military service. We also meet the growing band of Israeli social workers and barefoot rabbis who have followed the “lost generation” to their Shangri-La to keep them from going off the edge.

Closing Night: The Floaters

A struggling musician takes a last-resort job supervising misfits at her childhood Jewish summer camp. Counselors and campers alike must overcome their differences to save the camp.

Florentene

Seen seven years after its premiere, Florentene, a hip, sexy Israeli TV show, still provides an engaging window into the hormone-soaked lives of the 20-something denizens of Florentene, a district in South Tel Aviv. The year is 1995 and there is hope (perhaps naïve) in the air and a feeling that peace is on its way. The principal characters include a former kibbutznik, two professional women, a renegade from an Orthodox family and two openly gay men. The final episode mingles drama and news footage to show how the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin profoundly affected the young people of the neighborhood, blurring the lines between the personal and the political. This steamy, beautifully written series is much better than anything you'll see on American network television!

Florentene Part 2

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Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story

Take a riveting journey into the intrepid exploits of the leader of Operation Entebbe. On July 4, 1976, 30-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan (Yoni) Netanyahu led the daring operation to rescue the 103 Israelis who were held hostage in Uganda. Filmmakers Jonathan Gruber and Ari Daniel Pinchot delicately weave the epic with the intimate in this personal story of a young man who dedicated his life to the service of his people. [MINIGUIDE 71/70]

Food and Country

At the height of the pandemic, renowned food critic Ruth Reichl shines a light on America’s broken food industry and the human toll behind the country’s ceaseless effort to create the world’s most abundant food supply.

Food for the Chosen People

A group of LA friends battle for a table at legendary Chinese restaurant Yang Chow to continue the Jewish Christmas Day tradition.

Foolish Me

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A Fool's Dream

Director Daniel Syrkin takes a journey through Israel, tracing back his immigrant father’s struggles, accomplishments and hopes as an artist. Along the way, his father’s biggest dream becomes Daniel’s own.

The Football Pitch

Israeli and Palestinian boys fight over a soccer field and reach a surprising conclusion.

Footnote

Footnote is Joseph Cedar's carefully crafted film about a complex father/son relationship between two scholars. The father has labored for years without much recognition. For the son, everything comes easily. The father takes great pride in once having been mentioned in a footnote of a book by a legendary academic.

For a Woman

Diane Kurys (Peppermint Soda, Entre Nous) once again mines her autobiography to fictionalize the early years of her parents’ marriage, a mysterious uncle of whom nobody speaks and the circumstances of her birth. Intimacy and suspense are the keys to Kurys’s novelistic framing of Jewish life in a corner of Lyon, France, just after the war, when freedom meant one thing to a man, another to a woman.

For My Children

As the second Intifada erupts, Israeli filmmaker Michal Aviad undertakes a video exploration about the moral and mundane dilemmas she faces daily in Tel Aviv. Beginning with deceptive simplicity, it quickly becomes a profound study of vulnerability and anxiety. As the nightmare of violence escalates, Michal and her husband Shimshon ask the quintessential Diaspora Jewish question, “When is it time to go?” Followed by a discussion with Michal Aviad.

For the Love of Spock

“Live long and prosper.” It’s impossible not to cherish those famous words spoken by the beloved half-human Vulcan. Leonard Nimoy, the man behind the pointy ears, left an indelible mark as an artist and as a mensch. Featuring clips from Nimoy’s career and inspiring interviews with the Star Trek cast, director Adam Nimoy has crafted a loving tribute to not only his father, but also to the man we know as Mr. Spock. —Joshua Moore

Forbidden Dreams

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Forbidden Marriages in the Holy Land

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Ford Transit

Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad follows the daily routes of a taxi-van driver through (and around) the roadblocks of the West Bank in this high-energy film that blurs the lines between narrative and documentary. Passengers from schoolchildren to diplomats share diverse perspectives on the frustrations and quirks of life in the occupied territories.

Foreign Sister

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Forever Activists: Stories from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

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Forever Love

In a small apartment in Haifa, an elderly couple’s quiet routine unfolds into a tender portrait of love, change, and the passage of time.

Forget Baghdad: Jews and Arabs - The Iraqi Connection

FORGET BAGHDAD: Jews and Arabs - The Iraqi ConnectionThe son of a Shi'ite emigrant family that fled Iraq for political reasons, Swiss film director Samir has created a brilliant tour-de-force in his new documentary FORGET BAGHDAD. This entertaining, ironic and visually stunning film essay is an exploration of the lives of Iraqi Jewish writers in Israel, former members of the Communist Party, in which Samir’s father was also a member.

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