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Filtered By: J Clear All

Naomi Kutin seems like a typical Orthodox Jewish pre-teen, until her extraordinary weight lifting talent thrusts her into news headlines and transforms the lives of her family.

Swim Little Fish Swim

Swim Little Fish Swim

Idealistic musician Leeward and his breadwinner wife Mary share a tiny New York apartment where they raise their three-year-old daughter. When aspiring young French artist Lilas crashes on their couch and strikes a chord with at-sea Leeward, the couple’s ideological conflicts come into sharper focus. Writer/directors Ruben Amar and Lola Bessis’s first feature (and her acting debut as Lilas) is a heartfelt film about the struggle between creativity and adulthood.

Still image from the film A Tale of Love and Darkness

A Tale of Love and Darkness

Natalie Portman’s directorial debut is based on Amos Oz’s memories of growing up in Jerusalem in the years before Israeli statehood with his parents.

A father’s mysterious disappearance throws his family into a spiritual crisis in this engrossing, beautifully acted drama set in modern Jerusalem. Uncertain if Eli is dead or alive, his family copes with their confusion in ways that test their faith and love. Wife Alma, a secular Jew, chafes when her observant in-laws insist on ritual prayers (tehilim), while her young sons embark on a religious scheme that precipitates a moral crisis.

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

The Amazing Johnathan Documentary | CENTERPIECE DOCUMENTARY

The Amazing Johnathan Documentary | CENTERPIECE DOCUMENTARY

It begins as a documentary about “The Amazing Johnathan,” a uniquely deranged magician who built a career out of shock and deception in the 1980s—but becomes a bizarre story about the unravelling of his documentarian.

The Ghost of Peter Sellers

The Ghost of Peter Sellers

In 1973, director-on-the-rise Peter Medak nabbed notoriously difficult comic genius and box-office star Peter Sellers for his new pirate comedy, Ghost in the Noonday Sun.

The Red Sea Diving Resort | SFJFF39's CLOSING NIGHT FILM

The Red Sea Diving Resort | SFJFF39's CLOSING NIGHT FILM

Inspired by one of the most remarkable true life rescue missions ever, The Red Sea Diving Resort is the incredible story of a group of international agents and brave Ethiopians who in the early 80s used a deserted holiday retreat in Sudan as a front to smuggle thousands of refugees to Israel. Chris Evans (Captain America, Avengers) plays Ari Levinson, the Mossad agent who leads the mission together with courageous local Kabede Bimro, played by Michael Kenneth Williams (The Wire, Boardwalk Empire). Posed as naive European entrepreneurs, the team he leads take advantage of the Sudanese government’s interest in expanding its feeble Ministry of Tourism to purchase a strategically located property along the Red Sea. Their plans are thrown for a loop, however, when real tourists begin arriving, expecting service.

They Call Me Dr. Miami

They Call Me Dr. Miami

Dr. Michael Salzhauer, a.k.a. Dr. Miami is the most famous plastic surgeon in America, and the first doctor to livestream graphic tummy tucks and breast augmentations on Snapchat – all with the enthusiastic consent of his patients. While chasing fame, can this Orthodox Jewish father of five carry on preaching for cosmetic surgery while respecting his faith?

The lives, loves, scandals and fixations of a tight-knit group of high society Manhattan youth are dissected with humor and compassion in this sexy drama from first-time feature director Joey Kuhn. The story centers on Charlie, a struggling young artist, whose loyalty to—and longtime crush on—his dashing best friend Sebastian are challenged when Sebastian’s swindling father is jailed and Charlie starts falling in love with someone else.

Those Who Remained | 11:30am pst

Those Who Remained | 11:30am pst

A lyrical story of the healing power of love in the midst of conflict, loss and trauma, Those Who Remained reveals the healing process of Holocaust survivors through the eyes of a young girl in post-World War II Hungary. This beautiful, poetic, and nuanced film had its US premiere at the Telluride Film Festival and was shortlisted for Best International Feature for the 2020 Academy Awards.

Til Kingdom Come

Til Kingdom Come

Millions of American Evangelicals are praying for the State of Israel. This fascinating film exposes the controversial bond between Evangelicals and Jews, in a story of faith, power and money, revealing how messianic motivations are intersecting with an apocalyptic worldview that is insistently reshaping American foreign policy toward Israel.

Tiny Tim: King For A Day

Tiny Tim: King For A Day

The story about the outcast Herbert Khaury’s rise to stardom as Tiny Tim is the ultimate fairytale. And so is his downfall. Either considered a freak or a genius, Tiny Tim left no one unaffected.

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?

Trembling Before G-d

Trembling Before G-d

This unprecedented feature documentary shatters assumptions about faith, sexuality and religious fundamentalism. Built around intimately told personal stories of Hasidic and Orthodox Jews who are gay or lesbian, the film portrays a group of people who face a profound dilemma

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.

Andrea is a recently sober writer whose career has stalled since she published her debut novel several years ago. She strikes up an affair with Nick (Jamie Dornan), a doctor-turned-writer who is hailed for his wartime memoir. At the same time, her sister Tara, a massage therapist dating an aging rock star (Ben Mendelsohn), finds herself inexorably drawn to a newfound religious zeal and, particularly, to a politically engaged rabbi (Billy Crystal).

Voyage of the Damned

Voyage of the Damned

Haunting in its relevance for today’s refugee crisis, this star-studded 1976 film evokes the hopes and fears of a people uprooted from their homes en route to a promised land on the MS St. Louis, the ship that brought 937 Jews escaping Germany on the eve of the Shoah in 1939 to the shores of Cuba, where they are forbidden to disembark (only to then be similarly rejected by the United States and Canada)

The Wedding Song

The Wedding Song

Karin Albou (La Petite Jerusalem, SFJFF 2006) explores Jewish and Arab culture and female sexuality in her bold and exquisite second feature. In Nazi-occupied Tunis, two teenage girlfriends, Muslim Nour and Jewish Myriam, cling to their lifelong bond. Outside the intimate female quarters of home and hammam, the world shared by Jews and Arabs is split apart by German promises of liberation. When the propaganda seeps through the gender wall, Myriam and her mother are no longer safe, and a hasty wedding must be arranged. But marriage, like friendship, becomes a test of ethics and courage. Karin Albou in person at the Castro.

West of the Jordan River

West of the Jordan River

Amos Gitai (Rabin, Free Zone) returns to the occupied territories for the first time since his 1982 documentary Field Diary. West of the Jordan River describes the efforts of citizens, Israelis and Palestinians, who are trying to overcome the consequences of occupation.

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.

Who Will Write Our History

Who Will Write Our History

PALO ALTO OPENING NIGHT: A group of Warsaw ghetto activists secretly collected diaries and photographs that told their history.

The Women’s Balcony

The Women’s Balcony

A rousing, good-hearted tale about women speaking truth to patriarchal power following an accident during a bar mitzvah celebration that leads to a gender rift in a devout Orthodox community in Jerusalem.

Orna, is the mother of three young children with a husband struggling to start his own restaurant. To help support her family Orna returns to the workplace, landing a job with a former army superior, Benny who is now a successful real estate developer. While Orna embraces her new position and tries to balance its demands with her home life, she begins to experience escalating sexual harassment from her boss.

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