JFI On Demand | Jewish Film Institute

Exhibition Series

JFI On Demand

Anti-Semitism
Black History Month
ChaiFlicks
Cinegogue Sessions
Comedy
Coming of Age
Curator Picks
Filmmaker Distributed
Films for the High Holidays
Holocaust
Israeli Films
J Weekly Top 10 Israeli Films
JFI Completion Grantee
JFI Resident
LGBTQ
Religion & Spirituality
Short Films
Social Justice
Streaming Service
Women's History Month
Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance

Film Type

Animation
Documentary
Episodic
Experimental
Feature
Narrative
Short
Shorts Program
Television Series

Program Type

Cinegogue Sessions
Cinegogue Summer Days
Festival
Next Wave
Stories She Tells
Sundance Film Festival

Filtered By: German Clear All

As Nazis separate children from their parents in the Warsaw Ghetto, a gang of women risks everything to smuggle their friend's three-month-old baby to safety.

Bye Bye Germany

Bye Bye Germany

“After World War II approximately 4,000 Jews stayed in Germany. Later, none of them could explain to their children why,” we learn in Sam Gabarski’s Bye Bye Germany. This stylized, humor-laced drama devotes itself to answering this question by portraying the lives of a sundry group of survivors who remain in Germany immediately after liberation and are led by a charismatic, top hat–wearing jokester (Run Lola Run’s masterfully expressive Moritz Bleibtreu).

Charlatan | 2021 Freedom of Expression Award Agnieszka Holland

Charlatan | 2021 Freedom of Expression Award Agnieszka Holland

Legendary Polish filmmaker and recipient of SFJFF's Freedom of Expresson Award, Agnieszka Holland's newest film is a richly drawn biopic of Czech healer Jan Mikolášek who rose to fame through his uncanny ability to diagnose disease with a mere glance at the patient's urine.

In this quiet but intense psychological drama, director Franziska Schlotterer crafts an erotically charged story set in the remote mountains of the Black Forest during WWII. A young Jew fleeing the Nazis is saved by a German peasant couple, but soon discovers that there is an unexpected price to pay for his salvation. The spare but sumptuous cinematography captures the passion, desire and jealousy waiting to explode.

The End of Meat

The End of Meat

This provocative documentary asks, “What would the world look like if we didn’t eat meat?”

A Film Unfinished

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.

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]

Germans and Jews

Germans and Jews

This thoughtful documentary is a subtle examination of the history of Germany’s postwar Jewish population and of the fraught and fragile relations between Jews and non-Jews. Structured around a dinner party attended by Germans and Jews—some of whom were born in Germany, some who are “Germans by choice”—the film negotiates sensitive questions of memory, guilt, identity and redemption with grace and aplomb while giving access to both sides of a crucial historical dialogue. —Seth Barron*SJM: Single Jewish Mom Free Screening

Go for Zucker! - An Unorthodox Comedy

Go for Zucker! - An Unorthodox Comedy

Jaeckie Zucker, a hard-drinking, pool-playing, lovable scoundrel in Berlin, is up to his ears in debt. When he learns that his long-estranged mother has willed him a sizeable inheritance, he thinks his ship has come in. But there’s a catch: Jaeckie--who gave up all things Jewish long ago--must first reconcile with his Orthodox Jewish brother, who is coming, family in tow, for the funeral. The madcap adventure that follows finds Jaeckie desperately trying to "pass" as observant, while trying to ditch the funeral so he can play in a high-stakes pool tournament.Politically incorrect, ironic and utterly contemporary, what makes Go for Zucker! such a standout is that, while in the irreverent mode of Mel Brooks and Larry David, this is a comedy from Germany--daring to present Jews in a guilt-free context beyond the Holocaust. Berlin-based writer/director Dani Levy has created a screwball comedy that breaks every taboo.

This sophisticated drama about the life, career and loves of German Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) shines a light on one of the greatest independent thinkers of the 20th century. When New Yorker magazine sends her to Jerusalem in 1961 to witness the trial of the notorious Nazi, Adolph Eichmann, Arendt begins to formulate her now famous concept ”the banality of evil” that opens up a flood of controversy.

About This Film

Incessant Visions- Letters From an Architect

Incessant Visions- Letters From an Architect

This artful documentary illuminates the life and work of German Jewish Expessionist architect Erich Mendelsohn. Mendelsohn’s story unfolds through letters exchanged with his wife Luise, both German Jewish emigres fleeing Nazism. Director Dror deftly juxtaposes the architect’s original drawings with contemporary views of his buildings, weaving in interviews with architects and the people who use these unique structures—a testament to the integrity and timelessness of visionary design.

The Interpreter

The Interpreter

Slovak interpreter Ali Ungar wants to find out the circumstances of his parents’ death at the hands of a Nazi officer during World War II.

Knowledge Is the Beginning

Knowledge Is the Beginning

Conductor Daniel Barenboim believes that “a life without music is impoverished.” In the 1990s, Barenboim and the late Palestinian-born writer Edward Said created the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, comprising talented young musicians from Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Tunisia. The film, an unusual hybrid of a concert movie and a documentary about artistic diplomacy, eloquently chronicles the life of the orchestra.

Labyrinth of Lies

Labyrinth of Lies

A young prosecutor in postwar West Germany investigates a massive conspiracy to cover up the Nazi pasts of prominent public figures.

An insightful, merciless black comedy - one of the most viciously funny satires to come out of Germany. Schoolgirl Sonja (Lena Stolze, featured in THE WHITE ROSE) comes from a prominent family and has gained the respect of the people in her small Bavarian town by winning a prize for best essay in a European competition.

What may be the last WWII Nazi trial, was also the first to use virtual reality in the courtroom.

Otto Frank, Father of Anne

Otto Frank, Father of Anne

Otto was the only member of the Frank family to survive the Holocaust, and after the war he dedicated his life to his daughter Anne’s diaries, working tireless to ensure the book’s status as one of the 20th century’s signal literary testaments. Frank’s zeal to publicize the diaries led him to questionable compromises and interpretations, but as David de Jongh’s evenhanded portrait makes clear, Anne’s diaries are unthinkable apart from Otto’s devotion.

A compelling tale of loss, betrayal and redemption, Andrei Konchalovsky’s bold, black-and-white World War II drama won the Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion and was Russia’s entry in the 2017 Academy Awards. Three lives fatefully intersect when Russian countess Olga is arrested for sheltering two Jewish boys in Nazi-occupied France. Echoing the intensity of Laszlo Nemes Son of Saul, Konchalovsky’s deeply spiritual vision is a major contribution to Holocaust cinema.

The People vs. Fritz Bauer

The People vs. Fritz Bauer

In late 1950s Germany attorney general Fritz Bauer (played by The White Ribbon’s lauded Burghart Klaussner) is intent on bringing the infamous Nazi Adolf Eichmann to trial. This riveting historical thriller chronicles the hindrances and the potentially mortal dangers Bauer faces as a closeted gay Jewish lawyer working alongside men in the government who can bring criminals like Eichmann to justice but who ultimately have the power to conceal their own Nazi pasts. —Zoe PollakScreened at Berlinale 2016

Projections of America

Projections of America

Hollywood screenwriter Robert Riskin’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town won him a 1937 Oscar. Less well known is Riskin’s series of short films, produced to aid America’s WWII effort. The films’ American values reflect his own Jewish, left-leaning principles, countering foreigners’ negative stereotypes of United States citizens. With narration by John Lithgow, director Peter Miller skillfully brings this effort to light.

Rabbi Wolff: A Gentleman Before God

Rabbi Wolff: A Gentleman Before God

Willy Wolff escaped the Nazis, became a renowned British journalist and didn’t go to rabbinical school till he was in his 50s. Now in his 80s, he leads two communities in Germany and still finds time for yoga, learning Russian and enjoying the racetrack. We go behind the scenes to see the beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking life of a deeply religious man who is rarely seen without a twinkle in his eye.

Srulik is running for his life. Literally. His once happy family is now dead or dispersed following the Nazi occupation of Poland, and he is alone in the world. Based on a true story, Run Boy Run tells the harrowing tale of young Srulik as he struggles to evade capture by the Nazis and ward off starvation, a harrowing story comprised in equal measures of cruelty and compassion, despair and hope.

Saviors in the Night

Saviors in the Night

Based on true events, this bravura drama powerfully records one memorable instance of moral courage under desperate conditions. Menne Spiegel, a German Jew, meets his old army comrade Heinrich Aschoff on the eve of a mass deportation of Jews in 1943. Aschoff, a Catholic farmer with a conscience, agrees to shelter Spiegel’s wife Marga and their daughter in spite of the deadly risk to his own family. Saviors in the Night, based on Marga’s best-selling memoir, relates the extraordinary true story of the families’ perilous years together. Join us for Opening Night in San Francisco with special invited guests Marga Spiegel, director Ludi Boeken and principal actor Lia Hoensbroech. Followed by Opening Night Bash at Swedish American Hall.

1
2

Need help using JFI On Demand? See our FAQ page.