JFI On Demand | Jewish Film Institute

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Film Type

Animation
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Program Type

Cinegogue Sessions
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Next Wave
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Filtered By: Na Clear All

The Auschwitz Report

Based on a true story, two young Slovak Jews manage to escape Auschwitz with a detailed report about the atrocities they witnessed first hand, only to find their account might not be so ready to be believed. Slovakia’s Foreign Language Oscar Entry for 2020

Baba Joon

Israel’s submission to the 2015 Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film surprises in many ways. For starters, the screenplay is almost entirely in Farsi, not Hebrew. The semi-autobiographical feature film debut from writer/director Yuval Delshad depicts three generations in the Morgian family, Persian immigrants from Iran to Israel eking out a living as rural turkey farmers. Sensitive performances, gentle pacing and refreshing plot twists combine to weave a richly satisfying story. —Emily Kaiser Thelin

Baby Face

Baby Face is a provocative pre-Code film starring Barbara Stanwyck as Lily Powers. who “sleeps her way to the top.”

Bang! The Bert Berns Story

Music meets the Mob in this biographical documentary, narrated by Steven Van Zandt, about the life and career of Bert Berns, the most important songwriter and record producer from the sixties that you never heard of.

Barney's Version

Toward the end of his life, Barney Panofsky (Paul Giamatti) looks back on his triumphs and tragedies, beginning with an ill-fated relationship with Clara (Rachelle Lefevre), whom he marries when she becomes pregnant.

Bedlam

BEDLAM is a feature-length documentary that addresses the national crisis and criminalization of the mentally ill, its connection between hundreds of thousands of homeless Americans and our nation’s disastrous approach to caring for its psychiatric patients.

Bee Season

In the Naumann household, 11-year-old Eliza (Flora Cross) feels she has little to offer in a family of overachievers. All that changes when she wins the spelling bee, much to the surprise of everyone.

Before You Know It

Stage manager Rachel Gurner still lives in her childhood apartment - along with her off-kilter actress sister, Jackie; eccentric playwright father Mel; and deadpan preteen niece Dodge - above the tiny theatre they own and operate. Level-headed and turtleneck-wearing Rachel is the only thing standing between her family and utter chaos. Then, in the wake of a sudden family tragedy, Rachel and Jackie learn their presumed-deceased mother is actually alive and thriving as a soap-opera star. Now the sisters' already-precarious balance turns upside down, and Rachel must figure out how to liberate herself from this surreal imbroglio. Co-writer/director/star Hannah Pearl Utt is a triple threat with an impeccable sense of timing and a flair for juxtaposing unpredictable elements. Just as pragmatic Rachel and off-the-wall Jackie seem to hail from different planets while inhabiting the same universe, so too do the film's over-the-top moments and characters coexist alongside subtle, grounded ones. Equal parts madcap comedy, adult coming-of-age story, and poignant drama, Before You Know It gleefully defies categorization, and that is its genius.

Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh

Hannah Senesh was a Hungarian Jewish resistance fighter, an optimist in the face of dire circumstances and a poet. Roberta Grossman’s first-rate documentary Blessed Is the Match, narrated by three-time Academy Award nominee Joan Allen, is a paean to Hannah Senesh’s courage and creativity. This inspirational film features gorgeous images of parachutes floating gracefully in the air, like Senesh’s poem “Blessed Is the Match,” written days before her capture by the Nazis.

Blue Box

The Jewish National Fund's ubiquitous Blue Boxes were an internationally successful fundraising campaign to support the purchase and forestation of land in Israel. This thought-provoking documentary focuses on Joseph Weits, a seminal figure in the growth of the organization, its tree-planting programs and the subsequent myth-building of a national narrative.

Born in Auschwitz

This is the story of a Jewish baby who was born in the death camp before the liberation and survived. An extraordinary journey of the second and third generation, breaking the cycle of trauma to free themselves from Auschwitz - forever.

Born in Auschwitz

The untold story of the only Jewish baby who was born in the death camp before the liberation an survived. An extraordinary journey of the second and third generation, breaking the cycle of trauma to free themselves from Auschwitz – forever.

A Bottle in the Gaza Sea

This modern-day Romeo-and-Juliet tale is set in Israel and Gaza. After witnessing a suicide bombing, a girl writes a letter to Gaza seeking understanding and sends it into the Gaza Sea in a bottle. It’s found by a young Gaza man who emails back. Though they live less than 100 kilometers apart, they communicate only through emails and letters. While they often disagree, their relationship deepens as the political situation worsens. [MINIGUIDE 71/70]

The Boy Downstairs

Zosia Mamet of GIRLS fame stars in this twentysomething romantic comedy that borrows the aesthetic and location of the popular HBO show. Mamet plays Diana, an aspiring writer who moves back to New York City after living in London. Three years ago she left behind mensch and loving boyfriend Ben (Matthew Shear). Now she returns to discover that he lives in the apartment below hers. Things are about to get complicated.

Bye Bye Germany

“After World War II approximately 4,000 Jews stayed in Germany. Later, none of them could explain to their children why,” we learn in Sam Gabarski’s Bye Bye Germany. This stylized, humor-laced drama devotes itself to answering this question by portraying the lives of a sundry group of survivors who remain in Germany immediately after liberation and are led by a charismatic, top hat–wearing jokester (Run Lola Run’s masterfully expressive Moritz Bleibtreu).

Chasing Portraits

Moshe Rynecki’s granddaughter is on a quest to recover the Polish-Jewish artist’s works lost during World War II.

Common Goal, A

Almost half the players on the Israeli National Soccer Team are Muslim, including the captain. The team’s diverse group of players causes controversy, especially during an important European tournament, most of it provoked by racist fans and the media. The players have their loyalty questioned by all sides while trying to guide Israel’s national team through the year’s biggest international challenge.

The Conductor - Centerpiece Documentary

A joyful tribute to perseverance, resiliency, and most of all the music, The Conductor is a profile of one groundbreaking woman who believes in the transformational power of art.

Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death and Technology

The kaleidoscope of clips in this wide-ranging documentary is so entertaining one could happily watch it with the sound off. But it would be a shame to miss Tiffany Shlain’s meditations on modern life and technology. The Bay Area–based filmmaker delves into everything from the honeybee crisis to her household’s weekly “technology shabbat” to her father’s struggle with brain cancer, all in an effort to understand our need to connect.

Judith Helfand: Freedom of Expression Award 2019 | COOKED: Survival by Zip Code

In July 1995, a heat wave overtook Chicago: high humidity and a layer of heat-retaining pollution drove the heat index up to more than 126 degrees. City roads buckled, rails warped, electric grids failed, thousands became ill and people began to die - by the hundreds. Cooked tells the story of this heat wave, the most traumatic in U.S. history, in which 739 Chicago citizens died in a single week, most of them poor, elderly, and African American. Balancing serious and somber with her respectful, albeit ironic and and signature quirkly style, Peabody award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand explores this drama that, when peeled away, reveals the less newsworthy but long-term crisis of pernicious poverty, economic, and social isolation and racism. Cooked is a story about life, death, and the politics of crisis in an American city.

Crip Camp (Cinegogue Sessions LIVE)

No one at Camp Jened could’ve imagined that those summers in the woods together would be the beginnings of a revolution. Just down the road from Woodstock, Camp Jened was a camp for disabled teens. Directors Nicole Newnham and Jim LeBrecht (a former Jened camper himself) deliver a rousing film about a group of campers turned activists who shaped the future of the disability-rights movement and changed accessibility legislation for everyone.

Dancing Dogs of Dombrova, The

On a cold winter night, estranged siblings Sarah and Aaron Cotler arrive at an empty train station in Dombrova, Poland. With their only available ride being a determinedly silent driver, they embark on a quest to fulfill their dying grandmother's wish-to find, dig up, and bring home the bones of her favorite childhood dog, Peter. While navigating the many obstacles and colorful characters they encounter on their journey, Sarah and Aaron must come to terms with their own demons and differences, while also contending with a soicety seemingly content to let its past lay buried for good.

Death Metal Grandma

97 year old Holocaust survivor Inge Ginsberg's wants to be recognized as a death metal singer.

The Decent One

A recently discovered cache of hundreds of personal letters, diaries and photos belonging to the Nazi Gestapo chief, Heinrich Himmler, seem to reveal a thoughtful, loving husband and devoted father to his daughter.

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