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Film Type

Animation
Documentary
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Television Series

Program Type

Cinegogue Sessions
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Filtered By: Ra Clear All

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

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.

Paradise

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.

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

Planetarium

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.

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.

Promise at Dawn

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

Protektor

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.

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

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.

Rabies

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

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

Raise the Roof

In the early 2000s, two professors were captivated by a series of now vanished but once resplendent synagogues whose painted interiors captured the color of Jewish life in 18th-century Poland. Determined to restore the splendor of these wooden structures, the husband-and-wife team recruited 300 young artists and students to reconstruct a life-sized model of one such synagogue. Raise the Roof tracks the labor and love that illuminate a glorious piece of Jewish history.

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.

RBG

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.

Red Cow

When the beautiful Yael arrives in an East Jerusalem settlement, Benny discovers her suppressed lustful desires.

Red Flag: Spotlight on Alex Karpovsky

A star of HBO’s hit comedy series Girls and Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture, Alex Karpovsky is one of America’s hottest emerging filmmakers and actors. Describing his onscreen persona as “his little Jewish engine of anxiety and guilt,” Karpovsky is a new generation’s Woody Allen. Red Flag, Karpovsky’s newest film as director/writer/actor, is his most biting satire. Alex Karpovsky will appear live at the Castro Theatre, followed by clips and discussion.

Red Trees

The Willers were one of only 12 Jewish families to survive the Nazi occupation of Prague. More remarkably, they survived openly as Jews. Red Trees is an exquisitely filmed essay that chronicles the family’s life in the Czech Republic, their narrow escape from the death camps and eventual emigration to Brazil; it is both a testament to the human will to survive as well as a celebration of diversity and acceptance.

Restoration

Yakov Fidelman struggles to hold on to the antique restoration workshop that has been his life’s work. After his longtime business partner dies, Fidelman rejects his estranged son Noah’s idea to close the business and build an apartment complex on the site. Anchored by Sasson Gabay’s (The Band’s Visit) mesmerizing performance, Yossi Madmony’s first feature yields a complex set of frayed character relations for which restoration proves an apt metaphor. [MINIGUIDE 70/70]

The Return of Sarah's Daughters

About This Film

Rock in the Red Zone

On the edge of the Negev Desert, the city of Sderot became the target of near-constant close-range Qassam rockets after Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza. Sderot’s youth found expression for both their anger and their hope in rock music. Drawn by the music’s energy, director Laura Bialis documents Sderot’s efforts to gain attention from Israel’s large cities, long before the summer of 2014, when longer range rockets reached them, too.

Roll Red Roll

When social media, “boys will be boys” culture and vigilante justice collided, Steubenville, Ohio, was forever changed

Run Boy Run

Srulik is running for his life. Literally. His once happy family is now dead or dispersed following the Nazi occupation of Poland, and he is alone in the world. Based on a true story, Run Boy Run tells the harrowing tale of young Srulik as he struggles to evade capture by the Nazis and ward off starvation, a harrowing story comprised in equal measures of cruelty and compassion, despair and hope.

Safe Spaces (After Class) | Next Wave Spotlight

"Safe Spaces" is a comedy about a NYC professor who spends a week re-connecting with his family while defending his reputation over controversial behavior at a college.

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