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Next Wave

An Encounter with Simone Weil

An Encounter with Simone Weil

Documentarian Julia Haslett turns her lens on French philosopher Simone Weil, one of the great thinkers of the 20th century, who was raised by a secular Jewish family and lived during the rise of Fascism in Europe. Haslett eloquently traces Weil’s intellectual identity as it shifted over time; Weil was a trade unionist, a Marxist, an anti-Stalinist, a pacifist, a fighter in the Spanish Civil War and a Christian-influenced mystic.

Every Face Has a Name

Every Face Has a Name

This beautiful film ponders identity and survival. Concentration camp survivors watch film footage of their arrival into the port of Malmo, Sweden and relive the euphoria of liberation. Their stories are juxtaposed against the plight of refugees today fleeing violence in North Africa. In the process we’re reminded that war is still with us and that compassion demands we extend aid when we can. The question is, will we?

Every Time We Say Goodbye

Every Time We Say Goodbye

About This Film

As a 13-year-old, Matthew Boger was thrown out of his home for being gay. While living on the streets of Hollywood, he was savagely beaten in a back alley by a group of neo-Nazis. Twenty-five years later, Boger finds himself in a chance meeting with the same neo-Nazi.

Facing Windows features dual love stories, one from the 1940s between two Italian Jews and one contemporary story of neighbors who watch each other furtively from facing windows across a street. The erotic tension between a sexy but routine-weary woman (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) and her hunky Italian Clark Kent look-alike neighbor (Raoul Bova) gives way to quiet communication and a profound experience when together they befriend Davide , an elderly Jewish man (Massimo Girotti).

A letter from Romania inspires a woman to travel halfway across the world to meet the brother she never knew she had. Like an archaeologist discovering pieces from the past, she finds the secrets to her late father's life, sparked by the discovery of a photo of a little boy.

We all love a good rags-to-riches story, and few are as improbable as the tale of Nathan Handwerker of Nathan’s Famous, the storied hot dog franchise. Famous Nathan draws on hundreds of hours of interview footage, home movies and audio recordings to weave the story of Handwerker as fast food pioneer, upstanding member of the Jewish community and family man. It is a quintessentially American tale of food, family and faith.

A Film Unfinished

A Film Unfinished

Filmmaker Yael Hersonski discovers that the Warsaw Ghetto footage that we’ve seen in countless documentaries was actually staged by the Nazis using the actual Jewish inhabitants of the Ghetto as actors. A Film Unfinished is a rigorous and profound documentary that simultaneously exposes the perversity of Nazi propaganda, honors its victims and pays tribute to the resiliency of the filmmaker’s own grandmother and the other survivors of the Ghetto.

First Cousin Once Removed

First Cousin Once Removed

Alan Berliner is known for creating original, personal and highly inventive documentaries that utilize home movies, found footage and probing interviews. In his new film the subject is his mother’s first cousin, poet Edwin Honig, who for the past several years has been living with Alzheimer’s. Berliner has chronicled his visits over many years to create a profound study of memory that is both playful and incisive. A gem from a master filmmaker.

Five Weddings and A Felony

Five Weddings and A Felony

Twentysomething Chicago filmmaker Josh Freed’s comic essay documents his real-life inability to commit to a serious relationship even after meeting the incredibly adorable and wise second-grade school teacher Paulina. When five close friends get married and his dad develops a life-threatening illness, Josh begins to question his own life choices in this freewheeling self-portrait that manages to be charming, galling, funny, cringe-inducing, and always compelling.

Already the winner of Israel’s top film prizes, this superb documentary thriller begins just after the death of the filmmaker’s 95-year-old grandmother. Sifting through a lifetime of accumulated possessions in her Tel Aviv apartment, Goldfinger makes an astonishing discovery: the deep friendship between his grandparents and Leopold von Mildenstein, the Nazi predecessor of Adolf Eichmann. The Flat is a complex, penetrating look at a different kind of Holocaust denial altogether. [MINIGUIDE 68/70]

Verité filmmaker Yoav Shamir (Checkpoint, 5 Days) hangs out in India’s Himalayan foothills with some of the 30,000 young Israeli men and women who annually escape there, take drugs and often “flip out” after their military service. We also meet the growing band of Israeli social workers and barefoot rabbis who have followed the “lost generation” to their Shangri-La to keep them from going off the edge.

Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story

Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story

Take a riveting journey into the intrepid exploits of the leader of Operation Entebbe. On July 4, 1976, 30-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan (Yoni) Netanyahu led the daring operation to rescue the 103 Israelis who were held hostage in Uganda. Filmmakers Jonathan Gruber and Ari Daniel Pinchot delicately weave the epic with the intimate in this personal story of a young man who dedicated his life to the service of his people. [MINIGUIDE 71/70]

Diane Kurys (Peppermint Soda, Entre Nous) once again mines her autobiography to fictionalize the early years of her parents’ marriage, a mysterious uncle of whom nobody speaks and the circumstances of her birth. Intimacy and suspense are the keys to Kurys’s novelistic framing of Jewish life in a corner of Lyon, France, just after the war, when freedom meant one thing to a man, another to a woman.

For the Love of Spock

For the Love of Spock

“Live long and prosper.” It’s impossible not to cherish those famous words spoken by the beloved half-human Vulcan. Leonard Nimoy, the man behind the pointy ears, left an indelible mark as an artist and as a mensch. Featuring clips from Nimoy’s career and inspiring interviews with the Star Trek cast, director Adam Nimoy has crafted a loving tribute to not only his father, but also to the man we know as Mr. Spock. —Joshua Moore

Forget Baghdad: Jews and Arabs - The Iraqi Connection

Forget Baghdad: Jews and Arabs - The Iraqi Connection

FORGET BAGHDAD: Jews and Arabs - The Iraqi ConnectionThe son of a Shi'ite emigrant family that fled Iraq for political reasons, Swiss film director Samir has created a brilliant tour-de-force in his new documentary FORGET BAGHDAD. This entertaining, ironic and visually stunning film essay is an exploration of the lives of Iraqi Jewish writers in Israel, former members of the Communist Party, in which Samir’s father was also a member.

Four Questions For a Rabbi

Four Questions For a Rabbi

About This Film

When Rebecca, an American, ditches her fiancé in Israel, she finds solace with tough, pragmatic Hanna, a Russian-Israeli limo driver. Hanna is headed for the "free zone" in Jordan to pick up money owed to her husband. There, they cross paths with Leila, a Palestinian businesswoman, and the three women form an inextricable bond despite their disparate backgrounds and views. A film about borders and terrain, both political and psychological.

The Freedom to Marry

The Freedom to Marry

What’s the definition of a mensch? After watching this inspiring documentary, you’ll have a two-word answer: Evan Wolfson. Founder of the advocacy group Freedom to Marry and the acknowledged “godfather” of the marriage equality movement, Wolfson’s 30-year struggle to bring about justice for millions of gays and lesbians is the heart of this fascinating history that retraces the circuitous path towards legalizing same-sex marriage in the United States. —Peter L. Stein

A classic better appreciated decades after its release, The Front is a comedy about a deadly serious subject. Woody Allen portrays a somewhat naïve front for a trio of blacklisted television writers; Zero Mostel, in a role based partly on his own story, plays a Blacklist victim who cannot betray his Jewishness. Walter Bernstein got a much-deserved Oscar® nomination for Best Screenplay.

A Generation Apart

A Generation Apart

About This Film

Germans and Jews

Germans and Jews

This thoughtful documentary is a subtle examination of the history of Germany’s postwar Jewish population and of the fraught and fragile relations between Jews and non-Jews. Structured around a dinner party attended by Germans and Jews—some of whom were born in Germany, some who are “Germans by choice”—the film negotiates sensitive questions of memory, guilt, identity and redemption with grace and aplomb while giving access to both sides of a crucial historical dialogue. —Seth Barron*SJM: Single Jewish Mom Free Screening

This Sundance award-winning documentary confronts the legacy of the landmark US Supreme Court decision in Gideon vs. Wainwright, which established the right to legal representation for indigent clients in criminal cases. Filmmaker Dawn Porter tracks three understaffed and underfunded public defenders in the South as they struggle to represent their clients. Gideon's Army shines a much deserved light on these unsung civil rights heroes of our times.

About This Film

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