The Forward Special Offer | SFJFF38: July 19

Love, Gilda

Gilda Radner was an instant sensation when she burst onto the scene with her brilliant, fearless and uproarious SNL performances, and when she died after an epic battle with ovarian cancer, a piece of us left with her. SFJFF38 is thrilled to open the Festival with this endearing, exuberant and intimate tribute that uses rare personal recordings, clear-eyed journal entries and interviews with SNL cast members to bring Radner back into our lives.

Closing Night: Sammy Davis, Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me

It’s hard to imagine a more talented and groundbreaking performer who led a more complicated and contradictory life than Sammy Davis Jr. Featuring excerpts from his exhilarating performances and star-studded interviews, director Sam Pollard’s riveting documentary presents a very full and very human portrait of this complex, courageous and conflicted man.

FOE Award: Liz Garbus - The Fourth Estate

Prolific documentarian Liz Garbus has been at the forefront of nonfiction filmmaking for decades. From The Farm: Angola, USA to Bobby Fischer Against the World (SFJFF 2011), What Happened, Miss Simone?, and now with The Fourth Estate, her latest documentary about The New York Times' coverage of the Trump Administration's first hundred days, the work of this two-time Academy Award nominee, Peabody winner and Emmy winner is a true embodiment of the Freedom of Expression Award.

To Dust

CENTERPIECE NARRATIVE. A Hasidic cantor (Géza Röhrig) and an under-equipped biology professor (Matthew Broderick) become blasphemously obsessed with the process of a human body’s decay. What follows are illicit dives into anatomy textbooks, outlandish homemade experiments, a road trip to a body farm, and the ever-lurking prospect of dybbuk possession. Röhrig and Broderick are an unholy match made in deadpan heaven as they embark on this increasingly literal journey into the underground.

The Waldheim Waltz

CENTERPIECE DOCUMENTARY. In 1986 former United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim launched an election bid to become Austria’s president. But revelations suddenly surfaced that Waldheim had been a German army officer suspiciously close to Nazi wartime atrocities in the Balkans. A stunning chronicle of the heated race and its foreshadow of populist, right-wing demagogues from Donald Trump to Austria’s Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache.

The Oslo Diaries

EAST BAY OPENING NIGHT. In 1992, with Israeli-Palestinian relations at a low and official communication suspended, an unlikely group of negotiators—two Israeli professors and three PLO members—met secretly in Norway. Faced with a Palestinian uprising in the West Bank, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin needed a new direction. The political drama with all its intrigue, suspicion and discord is told through the actual diaries of the negotiators and the long-discarded footage of the actual Oslo negotiations.

Who Will Write Our History

PALO ALTO OPENING NIGHT. In the Warsaw Ghetto, a group of activists secretly collected eyewitness accounts, diaries and photographs that told the history of the war from the perspective of the Jews. These archives are now finally revealed to the world. Told through a combination of archival footage, photographs and masterful reenactments, the film is a stirring paean to these prescient individuals and a celebration of their optimism, persistence and grit.

The City Without Jews (with live score)

The economy in mythical Utopia is in the dumpster, and who is blamed? The usual scapegoat: the Jews. After the Jews are expelled, however, the economy, missing their invaluable participation, actually takes a turn for the worse, and Utopia begs them to come back. This 1924 silent Austrian satire is an object lesson in the absurdity of such thinking, and an unwitting prediction of the horrific events in Europe ten years later.

Chasing Portraits

First-time Bay Area filmmaker Elizabeth Rynecki takes us along on a quest to find her Polish-Jewish great-grandfather Moshe Rynecki’s lost artworks. The art disappeared after he was deported to the Warsaw Ghetto and perished at Majdanek. His more than 800 paintings and sculptures portrayed scenes of everyday Jewish life, and although her family was able to save some of it, Elizabeth knew there were many more pieces out there.

Commandments

After heisting a priceless mezuzah, wily thief Amram needs a place to hide, a place no one would ever suspect. He lands in just the spot in a company of Orthodox Jews undergoing basic training for the Israeli army. Our anti-hero (or is it hero?) must now earn the trust of his comrades and pass basic training, all the while keeping his secret past hidden, as well as the stolen loot.

The Interpreter

Slovak interpreter Ali Ungar wants to find out the circumstances of his parents’ death at the hands of a Nazi officer and perhaps exact revenge. The officer’s son is still alive, but once Ungar finds him, the expectations become less expected. The odd couple sets out on a road trip through the lush green fields of Slovakia to unearth one story where endless stories of atrocities lie buried and are more nuanced than either had imagined.

The Last Suit

Abraham, an 88-year-old tailor in Buenos Aires, has waited decades to fulfill a promise to a distant friend who helped him escape the Holocaust in Poland during the war. The cantankerous Abraham (in a heartfelt performance by Miguel Ángel Solá) clashes with everyone whose help he needs. But he seems to be mysteriously blessed, as the very people he fights with become his guardian angels, helping him each step along the way.

Naila and the Uprising

Award-winning filmmaker Julia Bacha (Encounter Point, Budrus SFJFF 2010) specializes in documentaries about the struggle for democracy in the Middle East. Her dynamic portrait of Palestinian activist Naila Zakout begins as one woman’s fight against the occupation and grows into a complex quilt of women’s stories. Bacha delves into the first intifada, the Madrid peace talks and the Oslo Accords, offering a crash course in the conflict from the unique perspective of Palestinian women.

Shalom Bollywood: The Untold History of Indian Cinema

In Shalom Bollywood: The Untold Story of Indian Cinema, award-winning filmmaker Danny Ben-Moshe tells the compelling tale of how a quartet of Jewish actresses came to dominate Indian cinema for nearly forty years. Performing under exotic names like Sulochana, Miss Rose, Pramila and Nadira, these daughters of the Baghdadi Jewish and Bene Israel communities carved their own paths in Bollywood while also retaining a deep connection to their heritage.

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