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The Amazing Johnathan Documentary | CENTERPIECE DOCUMENTARY

The Amazing Johnathan Documentary | CENTERPIECE DOCUMENTARY

It begins as a documentary about “The Amazing Johnathan,” a uniquely deranged magician who built a career out of shock and deception in the 1980s—but becomes a bizarre story about the unravelling of his documentarian.

The Ghost of Peter Sellers

The Ghost of Peter Sellers

In 1973, director-on-the-rise Peter Medak nabbed notoriously difficult comic genius and box-office star Peter Sellers for his new pirate comedy, Ghost in the Noonday Sun.

The Red Sea Diving Resort | SFJFF39's CLOSING NIGHT FILM

The Red Sea Diving Resort | SFJFF39's CLOSING NIGHT FILM

Inspired by one of the most remarkable true life rescue missions ever, The Red Sea Diving Resort is the incredible story of a group of international agents and brave Ethiopians who in the early 80s used a deserted holiday retreat in Sudan as a front to smuggle thousands of refugees to Israel. Chris Evans (Captain America, Avengers) plays Ari Levinson, the Mossad agent who leads the mission together with courageous local Kabede Bimro, played by Michael Kenneth Williams (The Wire, Boardwalk Empire). Posed as naive European entrepreneurs, the team he leads take advantage of the Sudanese government’s interest in expanding its feeble Ministry of Tourism to purchase a strategically located property along the Red Sea. Their plans are thrown for a loop, however, when real tourists begin arriving, expecting service.

They Call Me Dr. Miami

They Call Me Dr. Miami

Dr. Michael Salzhauer, a.k.a. Dr. Miami is the most famous plastic surgeon in America, and the first doctor to livestream graphic tummy tucks and breast augmentations on Snapchat – all with the enthusiastic consent of his patients. While chasing fame, can this Orthodox Jewish father of five carry on preaching for cosmetic surgery while respecting his faith?

This is Personal

This is Personal

Director Amy Berg ('An Open Secret') turns the spotlight on the Women's March, especially co-founder Tamika Mallory - whose support of Louis Farrakhan has generated so much controversy - in this panoramic documentary.

The lives, loves, scandals and fixations of a tight-knit group of high society Manhattan youth are dissected with humor and compassion in this sexy drama from first-time feature director Joey Kuhn. The story centers on Charlie, a struggling young artist, whose loyalty to—and longtime crush on—his dashing best friend Sebastian are challenged when Sebastian’s swindling father is jailed and Charlie starts falling in love with someone else.

Those Who Remained | 11:30am pst

Those Who Remained | 11:30am pst

A lyrical story of the healing power of love in the midst of conflict, loss and trauma, Those Who Remained reveals the healing process of Holocaust survivors through the eyes of a young girl in post-World War II Hungary. This beautiful, poetic, and nuanced film had its US premiere at the Telluride Film Festival and was shortlisted for Best International Feature for the 2020 Academy Awards.

Thy Father's Chair

Thy Father's Chair

In this Jewish Grey Gardens, Avraham is a sixtysomething Orthodox Jew living in Brooklyn in his deceased parents’ family home. Avraham passes his time in his claustrophobic apartment petting his cats and sitting on a dilapidated couch among old newspapers, books, bed bugs and rotten food. When a deep cleaning crew arrives, he finally has to face his fears and confront his inability to separate himself from the past. —Shevi Loewinger

Til Kingdom Come

Til Kingdom Come

Millions of American Evangelicals are praying for the State of Israel. This fascinating film exposes the controversial bond between Evangelicals and Jews, in a story of faith, power and money, revealing how messianic motivations are intersecting with an apocalyptic worldview that is insistently reshaping American foreign policy toward Israel.

Tiny Tim: King For A Day

Tiny Tim: King For A Day

The story about the outcast Herbert Khaury’s rise to stardom as Tiny Tim is the ultimate fairytale. And so is his downfall. Either considered a freak or a genius, Tiny Tim left no one unaffected.

Tobacconist, The

Tobacconist, The

Seventeen-year-old Franz journeys to Vienna to apprentice at a tobacco shop. There he meets Sigmund Freud (Bruno Ganz), a regular customer, and over time the two very different men form a singular friendship. When Franz falls desperately in love with the music-hall dancer Anezka, he seeks advice from the renowned psychoanalyst, who admits that the female sex is as big a mystery to him as it is to Franz. As political and social conditions in Austria dramatically worsen with the Nazis' arrival in Vienna, Franz, Freud, and Anezka are swept into the maelstrom of events. Each has a big decision to make: to stay or to flee?

Trembling Before G-d

Trembling Before G-d

This unprecedented feature documentary shatters assumptions about faith, sexuality and religious fundamentalism. Built around intimately told personal stories of Hasidic and Orthodox Jews who are gay or lesbian, the film portrays a group of people who face a profound dilemma

The Trials of Muhammad Ali

The Trials of Muhammad Ali

In the 1960s, Muhammad Ali threw off what he called his “slave name,” Cassius Clay, joined the Nation of Islam and refused to serve in the Vietnam War. Boasting archival interviews including Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis, Bill Siegel’s documentary tackles some of the greatest themes of our times: power, race, faith, identity and freedom from the legacy of slavery. Like its articulate subject, Siegel’s doc “floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.”

Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me | Opening Night at the Concord Drive-In

Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me | Opening Night at the Concord Drive-In

Throughout the year we search the universe for films that reflect the Jewish value of Tikkun Olam- repairing the world through one’s actions. This year we only had to look in our backyard. Barbara Lee, the US Representative for California’s 13th District, has spent her life fighting inequality and racism, uplifting the stories of those falling through the cracks and speaking truth to power. The current protests and reactions to George Floyd’s death has only elevated her visibility in Congress and the country as she has called for a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Commission to confront the legacy of slavery and racism in the U.S. and propose ways forward.

Tulip Time--The Rise and Fall of the Trio Lescano

Tulip Time--The Rise and Fall of the Trio Lescano

Dutch Jewish sisters Sandra, Giuditta and Caterinetta Lescano, known as Trio Lescano, were the Italian equivalent of the Andrews Sisters. They were immensely popular in the late 1930s and early 1940s until the Italian fascist ideology forced them into silence. Tulip Time is a fascinating profile of the swinging Trio Lescano, who went from being circus performers to darlings of the Fascist elite to pariahs because they were Jews.

Andrea is a recently sober writer whose career has stalled since she published her debut novel several years ago. She strikes up an affair with Nick (Jamie Dornan), a doctor-turned-writer who is hailed for his wartime memoir. At the same time, her sister Tara, a massage therapist dating an aging rock star (Ben Mendelsohn), finds herself inexorably drawn to a newfound religious zeal and, particularly, to a politically engaged rabbi (Billy Crystal).

Very Semi-Serious

Very Semi-Serious

Famed and would-be cartoonists return to the New Yorker week after week to vie for the approval of the acerbic, egotistical, funny and deeply human cartoon editor Bruce Mankoff. From the neurotic Roz Chast to the offbeat Bruce Eric Kaplan, these humorists draw us into their sometimes eccentric, sometimes morose, always delightful world views. Like binging on a year’s worth of New Yorker cartoons, Very Semi-Serious delights and leaves you wanting more.

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

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.

Waltz with Bashir thumbnail

Waltz with Bashir

Waltz with Bashir This devastating animated documentary by Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman is a kind of fictionalized documentary using rotoscope-animation techniques with live action footage to depict Folman's search for the traumatic lost memories of his experiences as a soldier in the 1982 Lebanon War.

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.

The Wedding Song

The Wedding Song

Karin Albou (La Petite Jerusalem, SFJFF 2006) explores Jewish and Arab culture and female sexuality in her bold and exquisite second feature. In Nazi-occupied Tunis, two teenage girlfriends, Muslim Nour and Jewish Myriam, cling to their lifelong bond. Outside the intimate female quarters of home and hammam, the world shared by Jews and Arabs is split apart by German promises of liberation. When the propaganda seeps through the gender wall, Myriam and her mother are no longer safe, and a hasty wedding must be arranged. But marriage, like friendship, becomes a test of ethics and courage. Karin Albou in person at the Castro.

Welcome to Leith

Welcome to Leith

In 2010 the attempted takeover of a tiny rural North Dakota town by notorious anti-Semite Craig Cobb ignited a national media frenzy. Filmmakers Michael Nichols and Christopher Walker captured the rising tension between machine gun–toting racists and pistol-packing residents leading to Cobb’s armed street patrol that took events to their inexorable conclusion. This chilling document powerfully highlights the rise of hate groups and the often questionable methods used to silence them. TL

West Bank Story

West Bank Story

Nothing is sacred in this parody of a musical comedy, set in the fast-food world of competing falafel stands in the West Bank. David, an Israeli soldier, falls in love with Fatima, the beautiful Palestinian cashier at the neighboring chickpea purveyor. This Sundance hit would have Shakespeare and Leonard Bernstein either spinning in their graves--or tapping their toes.

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