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Film Type

Animation
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Television Series

Program Type

Cinegogue Sessions
Cinegogue Summer Days
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Next Wave
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Sundance Film Festival
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Filtered By: P Clear All

Six Minutes to Midnight

Eddie Izzard and Dame Judi Dench star in this thrilling Hitchockian homage to British spy cinema. In the summer of 1939, influential families in Nazi Germany have sent their daughters to a finishing school in an English seaside town where one of the professors soon uncovers their diabolical scheme and races to tell the truth. But who can he trust?

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.

A Small Act

Can a single act of generosity transform a life? As a poor Kenyan boy, Chris Mburu’s life changed forever when a Jewish schoolteacher in Sweden anonymously sponsored his education. Today a Harvard-educated lawyer, he honors his benefactor (and now friend) by providing scholarships in her name to a new generation of promising but desperately poor Kenyan children. A Small Act rivetingly celebrates this inspiring example of “paying it forward.”

Snails in the Rain

In the summer of 1989 in Tel Aviv the brawny linguistics student Boaz is rattled when he receives a letter from a secret male admirer. With deeply internalized homophobia, Boaz both wildly anticipates and dreads the letters. Frustration bubbles to the surface and the tensions grows in director Yariv Mozer’s masterful first narrative feature marked by intimate flashbacks and remarkable performances by lead actors Yoav Reuveni and Moran Rosenblatt.

Snowy

Snowy, a four-inch-long pet turtle, has lived an isolated life in the family basement. With help from a team of experts and his caretaker, Uncle Larry, we ask: Can Snowy be happy, and what would it take?

Son of Saul

Saul Ausländer is a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners isolated from the camp and forced to assist the Nazis in the machinery of large-scale extermination. While working in one of the crematoriums, Saul discovers the body of a boy he takes for his son.

Spartacus

SFJFF Freedom of Expression honoree Kirk Douglas is gladiator Spartacus, leader of a slave revolt in pre-Christian Rome, in Stanley Kubrick’s restored widescreen spectacle. Two politically committed leftists, Jewish novelist Howard Fast and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, wrote and adapted this epic that went on to win four Academy Awards. In a heroic revolt of his own, star and producer Douglas insisted on giving rightful credit to Red Scare target Trumbo, effectively ending the Hollywood blacklist.

Stalin Thought of You

A portrait of 105-year-old Russian political cartoonist Boris Efimov, whose pointed caricatures filled the pages of satirical magazines from Lenin’s time to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, Kevin McNeer’s fascinating documentary relates the riveting tale of Efimov’s relationship with brutal dictator Josef Stalin and the tragic fall of his beloved brother, Mikhail. A dizzying, deeply moving chronicle of two siblings and one dictator whose crossed paths illuminate the story of a nation.

Standing Up, Falling Down

An unlikely, multigenerational friendship between a failed comedian and a charming, alcoholic dermatologist helps both confront long-simmering regrets in this warm-hearted buddy comedy.

Sturgeon Queens

What do Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Morley Safer have in common? They each are passionate about their love for the smoked fish at Russ's Daughters. This venerable establishment has been around for 100 years, and in this humorous, heartfelt and mouthwatering documentary we meet the delightful 100-year-old and 92-year-old daughters of the store’s name and the sturgeon queens of the title. Preceded by Salomea’s Nose.

Summer of '85 | NEXT WAVE SPOTLIGHT

In this sun-drenched romance-turned-tragedy, celebrated French auteur François Ozon brings us to the coast of Normandy. Over the course of a summer, the chemistry between Alex and Davis burns as their budding romance gives way to a dangerous obsession. Mixing camp, queerness and thriller elements, this gorgeous 1980’s period piece will make you want to dance to 80’s disco music, while sitting on the edge of your couch.

Supergirl

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.

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.

Tehilim

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.

Tel Aviv On Fire | CENTERPIECE NARRATIVE

Salam, an inexperienced young Palestinian man, becomes a writer on a popular soap opera after a chance meeting with an Israeli soldier. His creative career is on the rise - until the soldier and the show's financial backers disagree about how the show should end, and Salam is caught in the middle.

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

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

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

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?

This is Personal

Director Amy Berg ('An Open Secret') turns the spotlight on the Women's March, especially co-founder Tamika Mallory - whose support of Louis Farrakhan has generated so much controversy - in this panoramic documentary.

Those People

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

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

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.

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?

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