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Film Type

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Cinegogue Sessions
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Filtered By: V Clear All

The Secrets

Naomi, daughter of a revered rabbi, comes to Safed—where the mystical texts of the Kabala were received—to study in an orthodox women’s seminary. Eagerly diving into serious Torah study, she catches the eye of the flirtatious Michelle. Assigned to bring meals to the mysterious Anouk (Fanny Ardant), ill and seeking spiritual redemption, Michelle and Naomi embark upon a secret journey of purifying rituals and forbidden love.

Seder-Masochism

Loosely following a traditional Passover Seder, the events of Exodus are retold by Moses, Aharon, the Angel of Death, Jesus, and the director's own father. But there's another side to this story: that of the Goddess, humankind's original deity. Seder-Masochism resurrects the Great Mother in a tragic struggle against the forces of Patriarchy.

The Sentence

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

SFJFF41 Closing Night Awards

SFJFF41 Closing Night Awards | JFI Completion Grant Awardees & Festival Award Winners

Shalom Bollywood: The Untold History of Indian Cinema

A compelling tale of Jewish actresses who became a dominant presence in Indian cinema for over forty years.

Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness

Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness presents a riveting portrait of the man who transformed Yiddish from a vernacular language into a literary one and, in the process, gave us much loved characters such as Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof. Interweaving excerpts from Aleichem’s work with interviews and archival photographs and footage, the film brings to life a lost world of Yiddish culture on the cusp of dramatic change.

A Short History of Decay

Nathan can’t get it together. Living in Brooklyn, trying to be a writer, he’s shocked into reality when his father in Florida suffers a stroke.

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.

Simon & Théodore

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

Six Million and One

Israeli filmmaker David Fisher initiates a road trip that becomes an extraordinary family psychodrama for his siblings at the site of the World War II concentration camp where their father Joseph was interned as a young boy. Traveling in a van they laugh at themselves and question their own willingness to go deeper into their family legacy. Stunningly beautiful forests and meadows silently conceal the reality of their father’s untold story. [MINIGUIDE 71/70]

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.

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?

The "Socalled" Movie

Meet Socalled (aka Josh Dolgin): musician, arranger, rapper, producer, composer, magician, filmmaker and visual artist, to name just a few of his talents! Blasting through boundaries separating different cultures, eras and generations, Socalled creates a wholly unique sound combining klezmer, funk, soul and hip-hop. Not too shabby for a nice Jewish boy from Montreal. This is a dynamic, kaleidoscopic portrait of an iconoclastic artist at the peak of his powers. Followed by live performance

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.

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

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.

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.

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