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Film Type

Animation
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Cinegogue Sessions
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Filtered By: Jos Clear All

Africa

Struggling with life post-retirement, 68-year-old Meir fights to restore his shaken sense of self. Director Oren Gerner blurs the lines between documentary and fiction, casting his own father as a man struggling against irrelevance and decline. Preceded by the short film, Long Distance.

Afternoon Delight

Rachel is a quick-witted, lovable, yet tightly coiled, thirtysomething steeped in the creative class of Los Angeles’s bohemian Silver Lake neighborhood. Everything looks just right—chic modernist home, successful husband, adorable child and a hipster wardrobe. So why is she going out of her gourd with ennui? Plagued by purposelessness, Rachel visits a strip club to spice up her marriage and meets a stripper whom she becomes obsessed with saving.

Beaufort

Near the end of the war in Lebanon, a group of Israeli soldiers defends an isolated mountain outpost next to a 12th-century fortress called Beaufort Castle.

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.

Blues by the Beach

When Jack Baxter and Joshua Faudem chose to make a documentary about Mike’s Place, an Anglo-American blues club on a Tel Aviv beach, they figured the boozy international hangout would show a side of Israel different from the all-too-familiar images of terrorism and conflict. But when Mike’s Place is bombed in a suicide attack, their film turns into an unexpectedly vivid account of coping with daily life in the wake of violence.

Campfire

Best Picture, 2004 Israeli Academy Awards. Rachel, a recently widowed mother of two rebellious teenage girls, hopes to start a new life by joining a religious settlement in the West Bank. But she must first win over the community’s leader, who is threatened by her independence. A nuanced, moving drama.

The Devil We Know

Victims take on Dupont when they discover it has knowingly been using a toxic chemical.

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.

Glickman

Marty Glickman was an inspiration to millions. Featuring interviews with Bob Costas, Bill Bradley and Marv Albert, this documentary brilliantly captures Glickman’s life as an athlete, a pioneering sports broadcaster (he coined the term “swish”), and as a passionate advocate of sports as a means of transcending divisions created by race, class and religion. If you loved The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, this movie is for you. [MINIGUIDE 69/70]

Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People

Pulitzer is an American icon who spoke of "fake news" over one hundred years ago. He fought the dangers that the suppression of news had for a democracy long before our present threats to press freedom.

Joshy

After his engagement falls apart on the evening of his birthday, Joshy’s (Thomas Middleditch, Silicon Valley) best buddies rally together to pull off a much-needed guys-only weekend for their grieving friend. As the partying heats up, Joshy and company continue to distract themselves from their troubles until they finally have to confront the elephant in the room: their feelings. Male bonding has never been more complex . . . and comically awkward.

Keep Quiet

Extreme in his anti-Semitic beliefs and denial of the Holocaust, Csanád Szegedi rose up through the ranks to a leading position in Hungary’s far-right Jobbik Party, and became a member of the European Parliament. At the height of his political career, documentation surfaced showing that Szegedi’s maternal grandparents were Jewish. In a stunning about-face, Szegedi chose to explore his Jewish roots, study Judaism and make a trip to Auschwitz with Holocaust survivors. —Sara L. Rubin

King of the Roaring 20's- The Story of Arnold Rothstein

King of the Roaring 20’s—The Story of Arnold Rothstein is a tale of ambition and the corruption of a nice Jewish boy. An Irish cop brings young Arnold home to his old-world father, who turns to mother Esther and says, “This boy has a dybbuk in him.” As Rothstein grows up, he strategically navigates New York’s Democratic politicians, the police, the Saratoga racetrack and the vicissitudes of love and luck.

A Life in Dirty Movies

A Life in Dirty Movies is an affectionate documentary about legendary sexploitation director Joe Sarno, “the Ingmar Bergman of 42nd Street,” and his loyal wife and collaborator Peggy. The film follows the Sarnos for a year, as 88-year-old Joe struggles to get a new film project off the ground. The film’s intimate perspective reveals a filmmaker’s golden years and his hope for renewed relevance. With John Waters.

Love & Taxes

Despite his job assisting a high-powered San Francisco corporate tax attorney, Josh Kornbluth hasn’t filed his own taxes in years. When his boss finally convinces him to file, so begins an unexpected and hilarious journey that will change his life. Seamlessly blending scenes from Kornbluthss finally convinces him to file, so begins an unexpected and Love & Taxes will capture your heart and make you never want to do your taxes the same way again.

Menashe

Joshua Z. Weinstein’s Brooklyn-based Yiddish drama is an authentic, tightly written, compelling story for anyone jonesing to hear more than a bisl (little bit) of the mamaloshen (mother tongue). Menashe, a complex and lovable schlemiel, is a young widower deep in the heart of New York’s ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish community who is fighting for custody of his son and struggling with his aversion to marrying again.

Molly's Game

Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut stars Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba in the true story of Molly Bloom, proprietor of Hollywood’s most exclusive high-stakes poker game for a decade before being shut down by the FBI.

Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer

Norman Oppenheimer (Richard Gere) lives a lonely life in the margins of New York City power and money; a would-be operator dreaming up financial schemes that never come to fruition, until he meets a charismatic Israeli politician.

On Broadway | Opening Night at the San Jose Drive-in

From composers to lyricists and producers to actors, Jews have played a pivotal role in the creation of many of Broadway’s biggest hits. This entertaining documentary tracks the breakthrough works and artists who made Broadway into a venue where you will find everything from the experimental and iconoclastic to the corporate and commercial, reflecting the diverse, complicated society in which we live.

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]

Rewind

Digging through his father's home videos, a young man reconstructs the story of his boyhood and recalls the abuse he suffered through.

Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg

Like Richard Pryor and George Carlin, he influenced a slew of the next generation of comics, and Robert Klein is still really funny! Klein is shown in his daily routines, providing a privileged look at the great comedian as he jokes about everyday life. Klein appeared on the Tonight Show and Letterman more than 100 times and hosted the third Saturday Night Live, appearing in the famous cheeseburger sketch. His spot-on impression of Rodney Dangerfield and his meeting with Don Rickles are some of the many highlights. Interviews with Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart and Bill Maher, as well as clips from some of Klein’s seminal routines, round out this delightful portrait.—Jay Rosenblatt

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.

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