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Filtered By: Dr Clear All

On Her Shoulders

On Her Shoulders

Nadia Murad, a 23-year-old Yazidi refugee and reluctant activist is the subject of this critically acclaimed documentary.

The Oslo Diaries

The Oslo Diaries

EAST BAY OPENING NIGHT: Diaries of the negotiators and long-discarded footage of the actual Oslo negotiations comprise this riveting documentary.

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.

Partner with the Enemy

Partner with the Enemy

This soulful documentary suggests the world might look different if women and mothers were calling the shots. Co-directors Chen Shelach and Duki Dror (Incessant Visions—Letters from an Architect, SFJFF 2011) follow Anat and Rola, entrepreneurs from Kibbutz Mizra and Ramallah who join forces to start a logistics company specializing in the release and transport of Palestinian cargo shipped to Israeli ports. But a hostile environment threatens the women’s partnership.

Promise at Dawn

Promise at Dawn

Writer/statesman Romain Gary is plagued by the long shadow cast by the ambitions of his mother.

When social media, “boys will be boys” culture and vigilante justice collided, Steubenville, Ohio, was forever changed

Take a traditional Jewish funeral whose rituals no one can quite recall. Mix in a Yiddishkeit setting in a predominantly Sephardic Jewish community. Add one of the most beautiful cities in the world as your location and top it off with a terrific ensemble cast. The result, Idit Cébula’s charmingly poignant French film Rue Mandar, reminds us that the messy, sometimes humorous and often bittersweet business of death can lead to new beginnings.

Safe Spaces (After Class) | Next Wave Spotlight

Safe Spaces (After Class) | Next Wave Spotlight

"Safe Spaces" is a comedy about a NYC professor who spends a week re-connecting with his family while defending his reputation over controversial behavior at a college.

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.

Nine optimistic and ambitious high schoolers compete for spots at Intel’s International Science Engineering Fair.

In Search of Israeli Cuisine

In Search of Israeli Cuisine

Renowned chef Michael Solomonov explores a diverse world of food drawn from more than 100 cultures. Chefs, farmers, vintners, cheese makers and home cooks discuss their roots and show specialties that both preserve and update traditional recipes using global inspiration. Uniquely and lovingly prepared shakshuka, boreka, maqluba, couscous and a kugel that challenges expectations are just a few of the irresistible dishes featured. Warning: This movie will make you hungry!

An intimate documentary about the impact a mother’s incarceration for a nonviolent drug offense has on her family.

Shut Up and Play the Piano

Shut Up and Play the Piano

The journey full of megalomania and piano music of Chilly Gonzales: from the Berlin punk scene to the philharmonic orchestras, it's a story of eccentricity which also stars Daft Punk, Drake, Feist, Jarvis Cocker.

When does it all begin—how do we become who we become? How do we get slotted into our places in the social pecking order? How did any of us survive the trials and tribulations of childhood? These are some of the questions that may pass through your mind while watching Duki Dror’s Sidewalk. It reminds us that the touch of our childhood is with us—and marks us—forever.

Simon & Théodore

Simon & Théodore

Over the course of one night in the streets of Paris Simon and Théodore learn how to accept themselves.

Sleeping With the Fishes

Sleeping With the Fishes

Alexis Fish’s life is a mess: Her husband is dead, her once successful party planning business is no more and anti-anxiety pills are the only thing keeping her going. When an aunt dies, she must return home and face her ever-disapproving mother and her well-intentioned but overzealous big sister. Writer/director Nicole Gomez Fisher’s delightful debut brings this quirky story of a dysfunctional yet loving Latino Jewish family to uproarious life.

Streit's: Matzo and the American Dream

Streit's: Matzo and the American Dream

Just as its iconic pink box has graced Passover seder tables for generations of American Jews, so, too, Streit’s matzo factory has stood for some 80 years on the Lower East Side. For many Jews, a family business has been a way to make a living and a way to ensure that the next generation could do better. This is all challenged by the need for modernity, the pressures of foreign competition and enticing real estate offers. —Sara L. Rubin

The Talent Given Us

The Talent Given Us

Family road trips should be illegal. But then you would miss out on one of the wackiest, fun-house-mirrored, rollicking rides of your life with this family, their meshugas flapping from their mini-van like so many damp bathing suits. Sundance hit The Talent Given Us is Wagner’s narrative feature film about a New York Jewish family, which happens to star his New York Jewish family.

About This Film

Ariel lives in New York, far from the lively Jewish district in Buenos Aires where he grew up. But when his father summons him back home for help, Ariel reluctantly returns. The Tenth Man is a kindhearted comedy with a gentle romantic touch. Director Daniel Burman (All In, SFJFF 2012) joyfully upends the old adage that you can never go home again and instead says, maybe under the right circumstances, you can. —Jay Rosenblatt

Tobacconist, The

Tobacconist, The

Seventeen-year-old Franz journeys to Vienna to apprentice at a tobacco shop. There he meets Sigmund Freud (Bruno Ganz), a regular customer, and over time the two very different men form a singular friendship. When Franz falls desperately in love with the music-hall dancer Anezka, he seeks advice from the renowned psychoanalyst, who admits that the female sex is as big a mystery to him as it is to Franz. As political and social conditions in Austria dramatically worsen with the Nazis' arrival in Vienna, Franz, Freud, and Anezka are swept into the maelstrom of events. Each has a big decision to make: to stay or to flee?

Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me | Opening Night at the Concord Drive-In

Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me | Opening Night at the Concord Drive-In

Throughout the year we search the universe for films that reflect the Jewish value of Tikkun Olam- repairing the world through one’s actions. This year we only had to look in our backyard. Barbara Lee, the US Representative for California’s 13th District, has spent her life fighting inequality and racism, uplifting the stories of those falling through the cracks and speaking truth to power. The current protests and reactions to George Floyd’s death has only elevated her visibility in Congress and the country as she has called for a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Commission to confront the legacy of slavery and racism in the U.S. and propose ways forward.

This masterful drama tells the story of two Jewish Uruguayan brothers. Jacobo lives alone in Montevideo, attached to his antiquated sock factory and the comfort of his routine. When Herman returns to Uruguay for the first time in 20 years, Jacobo asks his long-tenured employee Marta to pretend to be his wife. The three embark on a weekend vacation together, where relationships unfold and jealousies threaten to extinguish any sparks of brotherly love.

The Young Karl Marx

The Young Karl Marx

Director Raoul Peck’s (I Am Not Your Negro) finely crafted period drama vividly brings to life the August, 1844 meeting between Karl Marx, a German philosopher and journalist exiled to Paris, and Friedrich Engels, the rebellious son of a wealthy factory owner. After Marx lobs a few barbs at the dandified Engels, a revolutionary bromance is born. Within a few years Marx and Engels founded the Communist League and created its defining document, the Communist Manifesto.

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