Film Archive | Jewish Film Institute

Exhibition Series

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Television Series

Rachel

In 2003, in a controversial incident, 22-year-old American peace activist Rachel Corrie was killed while attempting to stop an Israeli military bulldozer from demolishing homes in Gaza. Rachel is a dispassionate but devastating essay investigating the circumstances of her death—including astounding eyewitness testimony from activists, soldiers, army spokespersons and physicians, as well as insights from Corrie’s parents, mentors and diaries. It quietly raises troubling questions while painting a complex portrait of a committed activist.

Rafea Solar Mama

Can an illiterate grandmother from Jordan become a solar engineer? Rafea, a Bedouin woman from Jordan, says, “Yes!” But when she returns from Barefoot College in India as the first female solar engineer in the entire country, Rafea’s real challenge is just beginning. Will she find support for her new venture? Will she be able to rewire the traditional minds of the Bedouin community that stand in her way?

Rainbow

A young Israeli officer positions his squadron in an inhabited Palestinian house in Gaza. Tension rises as he has to deal simultaneously with the needs of the Palestinian family and a rebellious military photographer. Rainbow, Eliran Elya’s impressive debut film, is based on his military service in the Givati Brigade.

Raindrops

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Raise the Roof

In the early 2000s, two professors were captivated by a series of now vanished but once resplendent synagogues whose painted interiors captured the color of Jewish life in 18th-century Poland. Determined to restore the splendor of these wooden structures, the husband-and-wife team recruited 300 young artists and students to reconstruct a life-sized model of one such synagogue. Raise the Roof tracks the labor and love that illuminate a glorious piece of Jewish history.

Ráj

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Ramleh

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Rashevski's Tango

Rosa Rashevski believed that tango could heal the body better than chicken soup. She is the catalyst for considerable family drama in Rashevski’s Tango, a charming ensemble feature by Belgian director Sam Garbarski. Set in Paris, the film is a portrait of three generations of a Jewish family wrestling with issues of identity, love and interfaith marriage after the death of matriarch Rosa.Rosa’s sons Simon and David struggle with their abandonment by their father, who left Rosa decades ago to become Orthodox and move to Israel. Simon and his Christian wife Isabelle fight over whether he will be buried in a Jewish cemetery. Their daughter Nina is falling in love with Antoine, who isn’t Jewish (but at least knows how to tango!). Meanwhile, Rosa’s grandson is in love with a Muslim woman. From the generation who lived through the Shoah, to their children and grandchildren, Rashevski’s Tango delivers laughs, tears and romance with its nuanced script and stellar performances.

Raw Images from the Optic Cross

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Real Estate

A young couple is about to bring a child into their messy life. One unforgettable day of apartment hunting turns into a journey towards passion and home.

The Real Inglorious Bastards

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Reality Bites: Documentary Shorts

These nonfiction short films take up the task of witnessing and documenting reality, which is so often stranger than fiction. True stories and documentary gems populate this program.

Really Rosie

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Rebecca Pierce: Half Freedom

Two African refugee activists fight against their community’s planned mass deportation from Israel, struggling alongside their Israeli and Palestinian neighbors.

Recuerdos (Remembrance)

A lyrical, ravishing remembrance of the enigmatic Luis Frank: Lithuanian Jew, Spanish Civil War veteran, survivor of Auschwitz, and longtime émigré in Mexico. Exquisite landscapes and poetic imagery take this far beyond biography -- it is a haunting meditation on a century of ruptured lives and the persistence of memory.

Red Cow

When the beautiful Yael arrives in an East Jerusalem settlement, Benny discovers her suppressed lustful desires.

Red Flag: Spotlight on Alex Karpovsky

A star of HBO’s hit comedy series Girls and Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture, Alex Karpovsky is one of America’s hottest emerging filmmakers and actors. Describing his onscreen persona as “his little Jewish engine of anxiety and guilt,” Karpovsky is a new generation’s Woody Allen. Red Flag, Karpovsky’s newest film as director/writer/actor, is his most biting satire. Alex Karpovsky will appear live at the Castro Theatre, followed by clips and discussion.

Red Herring (Centerpiece Documentary)

When 24-year-old director Kit Vincent receives a terminal diagnosis, his first instinct is to turn on his camera and embark on an emotional, spiritual and darkly humorous journey.

Red Herring

In the midst of shocking family revelations, a young filmmaker is diagnosed with terminal cancer. What follows is an intimate and darkly humorous journey of a family’s attempt to make sense of their upended past and disrupted future.

The Red House

This beautifully animated documentary voices the tails of one unique building in Tel Aviv.

Red Kiss

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Red Leaves

An elderly Ethiopian widower sells his apartment and informs his grown children that he intends to live by shuttling between their households. Over his long journey, the stubborn patriarch discovers his family’s hidden secrets while observing the disappearance of the Jewish immigrant culture he holds dear. Director Bazi Gete and actor Debebe Eshetu have crafted a shattering cinematic experience that will linger with the viewer long after the lights have come up.

Red Shirley

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The Red Toy

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Red Trees

The Willers were one of only 12 Jewish families to survive the Nazi occupation of Prague. More remarkably, they survived openly as Jews. Red Trees is an exquisitely filmed essay that chronicles the family’s life in the Czech Republic, their narrow escape from the death camps and eventual emigration to Brazil; it is both a testament to the human will to survive as well as a celebration of diversity and acceptance.

Red, or The Blood of Abel

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A Reel War: Shalal

While digging in an Israeli archive, a film researcher stumbles across never-before-seen footage from a long-lost Palestinian Liberation Organization archive seized by Israel in the 1982 Lebanon war.

Refugee Lullaby

"When a friend sent me a viral YouTube video of an Austrian driver smuggling refugees over the border and singing songs with them in Yiddish, I knew there was a story to betold". Hans Breuer, the driver, is the protagonist of the film "Refugee Lullaby". He spends his free time helping refugees any way he can, while singing to them Yiddish lullabies to comfort them.

Refugees

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Regarding Susan Sontag

Regarding Susan Sontag reflects the boldness of Sontag’s work and the cultural importance of her thought, through extraordinary archival footage and still photographs, riveting interviews with Sontag’s friends and colleagues, and a rich tapestry of artifacts from popular culture. These are combined with creatively culled and manipulated images to create a nuanced, sophisticated portrait of a great thinker. Many Americans know Sontag’s name; the film shows us who she was, and why her thoughts about topics such as illness, photography, war, terrorism, and torture remain vitally important in the new world of the 21st century.

Regina

With the only surviving photo of Regina Jonas, filmmaker Diana Groo reconstructs the life of the world’s first female rabbi. The film poetically reveals the pleasures and chaos of Weimar and post-Weimar Germany with archival images from cabarets to the 1936 Olympics. During the Nazi era, Jonas’s sermons and her unparalleled dedication brought encouragement to persecuted German Jews. With actress Rachel Weisz as the voice of Regina. Preceded by Tzniut Through graceful and poetic use of archival footage, Diana Groo brings us a story of a person whose image is known though one photograph alone. Scenes from Jewish life in Berlin during the early twentieth century come to life: synagogues, Jewish schools, parks, streets, and newsreels permeate the film, while a gentle voiceover handled expertly by Dánel Böhm and Daniel Kardos tell us this unique story. What may have seemed a challenge for a filmmaker, turns into the film’s greatest creative trait.

Remember This

The brilliant David Strathairn gives a mesmerizing one-man performance as Jan Karski, a WWII Polish resistance fighter, whose testimony was emotionally given in Claude Lanzmann’s "Shoah."

Remembering Gene Wilder (Opening Night)

The endearing comic genius of screen actor Gene Wilder comes to life in this affectionate tribute, chock full of uproarious clips, outtakes and poignant reminiscences.

Remembering Home

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Remembering Marrakech

This collection of five short documentaries shows different aspects of life in the Mellah, the Jewish quarter of Marrakech, told mostly by Moroccan Muslims and the few Jews still living there. These films were created by a group of Israeli students from Sapir College and Moroccan students from Benguerir Polytechnic University working under the tutelage of renowned cinematographer Philippe Bellaiche (Advocate, SFJFF 2019).

Remembrance (2011)

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