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Filtered By: Clear All

Eight Men Out

The Chicago White Sox, who are set to play the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series of 1919, are at odds with their team's owner, Charles Comiskey (Clifton James), who pays his players unsatisfactory wages despite the team's popularity.

An Encounter with Simone Weil

Documentarian Julia Haslett turns her lens on French philosopher Simone Weil, one of the great thinkers of the 20th century, who was raised by a secular Jewish family and lived during the rise of Fascism in Europe. Haslett eloquently traces Weil’s intellectual identity as it shifted over time; Weil was a trade unionist, a Marxist, an anti-Stalinist, a pacifist, a fighter in the Spanish Civil War and a Christian-influenced mystic.

Everything is Illuminated

A young Jewish-American man obsessed with his family history, Jonathan Safran Foer (Elijah Wood) decides to journey to the Ukraine to find out more about the life of his grandfather.

Famous Nathan

We all love a good rags-to-riches story, and few are as improbable as the tale of Nathan Handwerker of Nathan’s Famous, the storied hot dog franchise. Famous Nathan draws on hundreds of hours of interview footage, home movies and audio recordings to weave the story of Handwerker as fast food pioneer, upstanding member of the Jewish community and family man. It is a quintessentially American tale of food, family and faith.

Fanny's Journey

Riveting from the first frame to the last, Fanny’s Journey is the true and absorbing story of a 13-year-old girl who is separated from her parents in Nazi-occupied France. Fanny is brave and determined and leads her younger sisters and a group of Jewish children towards sanctuary in Switzerland. Expertly directed and well acted, the film emphasizes the resilience of these young heroes and is especially relevant in the present moment.

Felix & Meira

Hadas Yaron (of the internationally acclaimed film Fill the Void) returns to the big screen in Maxime Giroux’s Felix and Meira, a story of an unconventional romance between two people living vastly different lives mere blocks away from one another.

Fiddler on the Roof

About This Film

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.

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 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]

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 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

Foxtrot

In Samuel Maoz's award-winning, acclaimed narrative feature, Michael and Dafna are devastated when army officials show up at their home to announce the death of their son Jonathan. While his sedated wife rests, Michael spirals into a whirlwind of anger only to experience one of life's unfathomable twists, which rival the surreal military experiences of his son.

Free Zone

When Rebecca, an American, ditches her fiancé in Israel, she finds solace with tough, pragmatic Hanna, a Russian-Israeli limo driver. Hanna is headed for the "free zone" in Jordan to pick up money owed to her husband. There, they cross paths with Leila, a Palestinian businesswoman, and the three women form an inextricable bond despite their disparate backgrounds and views. A film about borders and terrain, both political and psychological.

The Freedom to Marry

What’s the definition of a mensch? After watching this inspiring documentary, you’ll have a two-word answer: Evan Wolfson. Founder of the advocacy group Freedom to Marry and the acknowledged “godfather” of the marriage equality movement, Wolfson’s 30-year struggle to bring about justice for millions of gays and lesbians is the heart of this fascinating history that retraces the circuitous path towards legalizing same-sex marriage in the United States. —Peter L. Stein

The Front

A classic better appreciated decades after its release, The Front is a comedy about a deadly serious subject. Woody Allen portrays a somewhat naïve front for a trio of blacklisted television writers; Zero Mostel, in a role based partly on his own story, plays a Blacklist victim who cannot betray his Jewishness. Walter Bernstein got a much-deserved Oscar® nomination for Best Screenplay.

A Generation Apart

About This Film

Gett: The Trial of Vivian Amsalem

In Israel there is neither civil marriage nor civil divorce. Only Rabbis can legitimate a marriage or its dissolution. But this dissolution is only possible with full consent from the husband, who in the end has more power than the judges.

Gilbert

If you think you know Gilbert Gottfried, the brash, shrill-voiced (“Aflac!”), boundary-pushing comic, think again. In this surprisingly candid documentary portrait, director Neil Berkeley reveals the foul-mouthed comedian in a whole new light as a loving husband and father of two young children. Featuring interviews with comics like Whoopi Goldberg and behind-the-scenes glimpses of Gottfried’s performances, Gilbert separates the man from the act, and what emerges is unexpectedly tender.

Girlfriends

About This Film

Glickman

Marty Glickman was an inspiration to millions. Featuring interviews with Bob Costas, Bill Bradley and Marv Albert, this documentary brilliantly captures Glickman’s life as an athlete, a pioneering sports broadcaster (he coined the term “swish”), and as a passionate advocate of sports as a means of transcending divisions created by race, class and religion. If you loved The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, this movie is for you. [MINIGUIDE 69/70]

God's Slave

Buenos Aires, 1994. Ahmed, a committed Muslim martyr, works as a successful young surgeon. But his destiny, when the inevitable day arrives, is to carry out an attack for radical Islam. Meanwhile, David, a cold-blooded Mossad agent, awaits the opportunity to exact some very personal revenge. This pulse-pounding thriller pits two determined men against each other in the aftermath of the deadly real-life bombings in Buenos Aries against the Jewish community.

The Good Postman

Golyam Dervent, Bulgaria: When gentle village postman Ivan runs for mayor on the platform of welcoming Syrian refugees, the outcome of this humble election (to be decided by fewer than 50 voters) soon takes on all the trappings of a high drama campaign. This often funny, always absorbing documentary that screened at the Sundance Film Festival shows the uneasy confrontation of a small village with the wider world during a time of humanitarian crisis.

The Green Prince

The Green Prince is such an extraordinary story that one is tempted to think it is fiction. Based on Mosab Hassan Yousef’s memoir, Son of Hamas, it is a story of two men, spy and handler, whom history insists must be adversaries. That they could reach a point of trust or friendship seems absurd. Embroidering a tangled web of intrigue, terror, and betrayal, director Nadav Schirman builds superb tension throughout a surprisingly emotional journey.

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