JFI On Demand | Jewish Film Institute

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Filtered By: 2014 Clear All

24 Days

The 1986 kidnapping of 24-year-old Ilan Halimi by a suburban Parisian gang of thugs became a cause célèbre because of the anti-Semitic nature of the crime. This thriller based on the true events is expertly helmed by Alexandre Arcady and focuses on the police team and the ransom calls that are the detectives’ only clue to the kidnappers’ psychology. Ilan’s mother has another clue, one that the authorities are regretfully too slow to recognize.

Arlo & Julie

In this whimsical romantic comedy, Arlo and Julie are a young couple adrift in Austin, whose lives are upended when Julie starts to receive mysterious packages in the mail. Each one contains more pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle. As they try to solve the mystery, they descend into an obsession that threatens to change everything. The result is an uplifting, surprisingly moving exploration of art and history, love, trust and faith. preceded by A Knock at the Door

The Art Dealer

A breathtaking 18th century painting on a crumbling wall ignites a noirish mystery and inspires one woman to delve into family secrets, long-buried memories, and perhaps even WWII-era government cover-ups. Dashing around Paris in her trenchcoat and fedora, Esther whispers in dark rooms, forges signatures and draws long, thoughtful puffs on cigarettes (though this may be more French than noir) in her journey to recover family paintings presumably stolen by Nazis.

Beyond the Fear

In 2005, Israeli scholar and divorced mother of four Larisa Trembovler married Yigal Amir, the infamous assassin of much-loved Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In 2007, after a series of conjugal visits, she gave birth to her fifth child, Amir’s son. It’s their son that documentarians Herz Frank and Maria Kravchenko skillfully build the film around as they reexamine the years of moral complexities surrounding his parents’ union.

Comedy Warriors

Five disabled Iraq/Afghanistan vets bring their painful life-altering experiences onstage, transforming tragedy into brutally fierce comedy gold, mentored by mirth masters Bob Saget, Zach Galifinakis and Lewis Black. With only days to prepare, the five are flown to Hollywood for a gig at LA’s famous Punch Line club. The big night finds the comedy warriors comprehending the healing power of humor and discovering that their lives are about to take an unexpected direction. Followed by live standup comedy by subject Joe Kashnow.

East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem

In the spirit of determined optimism legendary Israeli singer/songwriter David Broza pierces the divide with a new music album East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem. Broza’s vision brings him to the heart of the conflict, a divided Jerusalem where his musician friends, including Grammy-winning Steve Earle, Palestinian Israeli singer Mira Awad and Iraqi Israeli Yair Dalal, take a remarkable journey outside the political walls that is rich with musical improvisation and performance.

Ed & Pauline

Hollywood screenwriter Robert Riskin’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town won him a 1937 Oscar. Less well known is Riskin’s series of short films, produced to aid America’s WWII effort. The films’ American values reflect his own Jewish, left-leaning principles, countering foreigners’ negative stereotypes of United States citizens. With narration by John Lithgow, director Peter Miller skillfully brings this effort to light. Preceded by shorts Ed & Pauline and Autobiography of a Jeep.

Famous Nathan

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.

The Green Prince

The Green Prince is such an extraordinary story that one is tempted to think it is fiction. Based on Mosab Hassan Yousef’s memoir, Son of Hamas, it is a story of two men, spy and handler, whom history insists must be adversaries. That they could reach a point of trust or friendship seems absurd. Embroidering a tangled web of intrigue, terror, and betrayal, director Nadav Schirman builds superb tension throughout a surprisingly emotional journey.

Havana Curveball

What does it mean to become a man on the occasion of your bar mitzvah? Bay Area filmmakers Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider (Return of Sarah’s Daughters, SFJFF 1997) follow their thirteen-year-old Mica as he struggles to make good on his commitment to deliver baseball equipment to kids in Cuba. Eventually, he gets to play ball in Cuba as well as experience the satisfactions and disappointments associated with being a benefactor to those less fortunate. preceded by Some vacation.[

A la vie (To Life)

Three women, Auschwitz survivors, are reunited 15 years after the war. They spend a holiday at a seaside resort in northern France. Set at the start of the ’60s, the era’s bright colors and cheerful music mark the end of one period in their lives and the start of another. Friendships forged in horror begin anew with tasty ice cream cones, stylish bikinis, a romantic adventure and basking in the sun.

Labyrinth of Lies

A young prosecutor in postwar West Germany investigates a massive conspiracy to cover up the Nazi pasts of prominent public figures.

Little White Lie

Daring to ask questions about her true identity, around which her parents had kept a careful silence throughout her entire childhood, filmmaker Lacey Schwartz gently but firmly pulls back the curtain on matters of race and family secrets in her deeply personal and riveting documentary. Schwartz raises larger questions for us all: What factors—race, religion, family, upbringing—make us who we are? And what happens when we are forced to redefine ourselves?

Mr. Kaplan

Jacob Kaplan has built a happy life in Uruguay after fleeing from Poland during World War II. But at 76 his health falters, and he fears that he is a failure. He rashly concocts a scheme to kidnap a man he’s convinced is a Nazi and ship him to Israel to stand trial. His bungled, Wiesenthal-esque quest not only makes for scenic viewing, it yields a genuinely surprising resolution.

My Own Man

Why do some men exude an air of quiet confidence while others appear indecisive and uncertain? Filmmaker David Sampliner wants to know. He is about to become a father, and he’s worried that he’s not “man” enough to serve as his child’s guardian and protector. In My Own Man, Sampliner searches for the keys to becoming the man he wants to be by confronting his own past and embracing new challenges.

Open Bethlehem

SNEAK PREVIEWBethlehem is revered as one of the world’s holiest places by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Yet for a Palestinian teenager growing up in the 1980s, the city felt small and stifling. To her proud father’s chagrin, Leila Sansour left Bethlehem for Europe at age 17. Open Bethlehem chronicles return to her homeland, and charts how Israeli settlements and military restrictions haves affected the political and cultural landscape of this ancient city.

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.

Regarding Susan Sontag

Regarding Susan Sontag reflects the boldness of Sontag’s work and the cultural importance of her thought, through extraordinary archival footage and still photographs, riveting interviews with Sontag’s friends and colleagues, and a rich tapestry of artifacts from popular culture. These are combined with creatively culled and manipulated images to create a nuanced, sophisticated portrait of a great thinker. Many Americans know Sontag’s name; the film shows us who she was, and why her thoughts about topics such as illness, photography, war, terrorism, and torture remain vitally important in the new world of the 21st century.

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.

The Starfish Throwers

Three inspiring people from different corners of the world (South Carolina, Minneapolis, India) tackle the same global issue: hunger. A nine-year-old gardener, a retired school teacher and a former top chef are The Starfish Throwers, defying the cynicism of those around them while living and breathing the wisdom that we are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are we free to desist from it.

Vessel

The heroine of this documentary, Rebecca Gomperts, embodies tikkun olam, repairing the world through your actions. The founder of Women on Waves, Gomperts builds a floating clinic to offer abortions where the procedure is banned, but her maiden voyage ends in disaster. She changes strategy, exploiting loopholes to teach women a World Health Organization–endorsed protocol to give themselves abortions at home. Her ingeniousness makes for a surprisingly invigorating tale.

The Village of Peace

An engrossing documentary portrait of African Americans who left their home in Chicago in the late 1960s and migrated to the Negev desert where they now refer to themselves as African-Hebrew Israelites, heeding Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to embark upon an exodus to the Promised Land. The thriving utopian community bases itself on teachings from the Torah and practices polygamy, natural birth, veganism and a rigorous adherence to physical and emotional health.

The Wanted 18

Once upon a time (in 1988), in a Palestinian town near Bethlehem, 18 dairy cows were purchased by the people of Beit Sahour from an Israeli kibbutz. This well-crafted, creative documentary, which includes stop-motion animation, explores the strange mixture of political complexities and bovine hijinks that were manifested by the town’s efforts to take dairy production—and fiscal resistance—into their own hands.

Zero Motivation

However tough the green-uniformed, female Israeli Defense Forces soldiers in Tayla Lavie’s Tribeca award-winning first feature may act, they constantly give themselves away as quite the opposite. Zero Motivation is not punctuated by bullets, but rather by battles over chores, bunk beds and boys. Yet while tenderness may be hard to come by in this acerbic yet humorous film, Lavie nevertheless leaves room to convey her hardboiled characters’ dreams and desires.

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