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
WinterFest
Women's History Month
Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance

Film Type

Animation
Documentary
Experimental
Narrative
Television Series

Program Type

Cinegogue Sessions
Cinegogue Summer Days
Festival
Member Screening
Next Wave
Stories She Tells
Sundance Film Festival
WinterFest 2018
WinterFest 2019
WinterFest 2020
WinterFest 2021

Filtered By: B Clear All

On My Way Out: The Secret Life of Nani and Popi

On My Way Out: The Secret Life of Nani and Popi

What happens to a 65-year marriage when a life-long secret is finally revealed?

SNEAK PREVIEWBethlehem is revered as one of the world’s holiest places by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Yet for a Palestinian teenager growing up in the 1980s, the city felt small and stifling. To her proud father’s chagrin, Leila Sansour left Bethlehem for Europe at age 17. Open Bethlehem chronicles return to her homeland, and charts how Israeli settlements and military restrictions haves affected the political and cultural landscape of this ancient city.

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.

How would one go about approaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a way that transcends the history and politics and delves deeper into our shared humanity? Not an easy task, but one that writer-director Lorraine Levy has achieved in the remarkable new film, The Other Son. The high concept premise is ingenious: an Israeli teen discovers that he is not the biological son of his parents and was switched at birth with the child of a Palestinian family. The lives of both families are shattered by this revelation and they are forced to reconsider their identities, values and beliefs. A must-see. [MINIGUIDE 100/100)

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.

Out in the Dark

Out in the Dark

When a handsome Palestinian grad student meets a charming Tel Aviv lawyer at a gay nightclub, it sets in motion both a cross-border love affair as well as a tense drama: Will Nimr’s militant brother in Ramallah discover his secret life? Can Roy’s connections keep Nimr from being deported? Out in the Dark is a taut tale of dangerous love played against a backdrop of the Middle East conflict.

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.

Sidney Lumet’s searing noir drama (1964) features Rod Steiger’s unforgettable performance as Sol Nazerman, a lonely, bitter Jewish pawnbroker in New York’s Harlem. Shot entirely on location with an edgy jazz score by Quincy Jones, The Pawnbroker is one of the earliest American films to deal with the lingering psychological impact of the Holocaust on survivors.

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

La Petite Jerusalem

La Petite Jerusalem

Eighteen-year-old Laura is torn between her Orthodox upbringing and the intellectual and physical pleasures of the secular world. She lives in a low-income suburb of Paris with her tight-knit Tunisian family and is very close to her sister Mathilde. When Laura meets Djamel, an Algerian Muslim émigré, a romance ignites. This passionate drama follows a young woman finding her spiritual, sexual and intellectual true north.

Silence shrouded the death of filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt’s little brother four decades ago; Phantom Limb is his haunting and healing meditation on postponed grief.

Two séance-conducting sisters from America (the luminous Natalie Portman and Lily-Rose Depp) meet a silver-haired French film producer who vows to capture their communions with the dead on his own cinematographic medium. This handsomely reptilian producer, who is based on the real-life illustrious filmmaker who was executed at Auschwitz, Bernard Natan, may be enchanted by the young and beautiful sisters, but he casts a darker, stronger spell on them.

Plastic Man: The Artful Life of Jerry Ross Barrish

Plastic Man: The Artful Life of Jerry Ross Barrish

This delightful documentary follows Jerry Ross Barrish, an unorthodox sculptor in his 70s, as he struggles to achieve commercial success. Daylighting as a bail bondsman and formally a pioneering independent filmmaker, Barrish now sculpts with found plastic—trash, essentially—which he assembles into works of Picasso-esque humanity. Too often art documentaries treat their subjects with reverent distance. But Barrish’s infectious charm and whimsical art will make you want to pick up a pencil and start drawing.

Presenting Princess Shaw thumbnail

Presenting Princess Shaw

This 2015 crowd-pleasing documentary from Israeli director Ido Haar is about the touching partnership between YouTube artist Samantha Montgomery (Princess Shaw), and Israeli mashup artist Kutiman.

The Producers (2005)

The Producers (2005)

Max is a Broadway producer with a reputation for consistently churning out flops. Leo is a nebbish accountant. Soon after meeting, Leo plants the idea of embezzlement in Max’s head. Before you know it, their get-rich-quick scheme is born. All they have to do is put together the granddaddy of all flops and they’ll be rolling in dough. However, making a disaster isn’t as easy as it seems.

Promise at Dawn

Promise at Dawn

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

Set in German-occupied Prague, this visually stunning, highly original thriller explores how much we might compromise for love. Emil accepts a job promotion to be the on-air voice of the Nazi propaganda in order to protect Hana, his Jewish wife. Meanwhile, Hana’s glamorous life as a movie star comes to an abrupt end. As she rebels against her Emil’s attempts to control her every move, Hana sets out on some dangerous adventures.

Quality Balls: The David Steinberg Story

Quality Balls: The David Steinberg Story

If you’ve never heard of David Steinberg—and even if you have—you’ll be astonished at the scope of his career captured in this very funny doc. The same man whose irreverent routine in 1968 contributed to the demise of the Smothers Brothers show also directed episodes of Seinfeld, Friends and Curb Your Enthusiasm in the 2000s. Steinberg genially recounts his adventures between clips and interviews with comedians he inspired. Preceded by Little Horribles: Road Rage

Rabbi Goes West, The

Rabbi Goes West, The

The film follows a controversial Chabad Hasidic rabbi from Brooklyn who moved ten years ago to Bozeman, Montana to bring his brand of Judaism to the American west. It examines Jewish identity in one of the most non-Jewish parts of the country, and sees what happens when other established forms of American Judaism (Reform, Conservative) are challenged by this Hasidic rabbi's undeniably charismatic Chabad presence.

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.

Brace yourself for Rabies, Israel’s first-ever horror flick. A young woman with a dark secret finds herself ensnared in an underground trap deep within an Israeli forest by a psychotic killer. Meanwhile, four attractive Israeli youths who took a wrong turn, a grizzled forest ranger and his dog, and a pair of rogue cops get drawn into a roiling ocean of misunderstandings. A ferocious bloodbath ensues. Prepare to squirm.

Rabin in His Own Words

Rabin in His Own Words

This examination of the life and times of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is constructed largely from archival footage, photographs and interviews, from Rabin’s early days to his tragic death. Director Erez Laufer (One Day After Peace, SFJFF 2012) takes us from Rabin’s childhood, through his experience fighting in three wars, to his assassination, and reminds us of the possibility for peace that remains for those who want it. —Seth Barron

Rashevski's Tango

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.

While most Americans think of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a progressive superhero and the beacon of left-leaning thinking on a court that veers ever-rightward, this raucous and informative documentary portrait reveals the complex history that brought her to this point.

...

6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15

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