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Beyond the Walls

About This Film

Blacks and Jews

A groundbreaking documentary about Black/Jewish relations in America produced by a Black/Jewish filmmaking team, Blacks and Jews goes behind explosive headlines to look at how the media shapes and foments conflict. The film features penetrating interviews with Clayborne Carson, Michael Lerner, Salim Muwakkil, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Cornel West.

Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh

Hannah Senesh was a Hungarian Jewish resistance fighter, an optimist in the face of dire circumstances and a poet. Roberta Grossman’s first-rate documentary Blessed Is the Match, narrated by three-time Academy Award nominee Joan Allen, is a paean to Hannah Senesh’s courage and creativity. This inspirational film features gorgeous images of parachutes floating gracefully in the air, like Senesh’s poem “Blessed Is the Match,” written days before her capture by the Nazis.

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.

Blue Vinyl

Activist filmmaker Judith Helfand does not look the other way when a potential toxin gets too close to home. When her Jewish parents affix vinyl siding to their suburban abode, she gets suspicious. Taking a personal comedic approach, directors Helfand and Gold uncover the impact of vinyl manufacturing and disposal on the atmosphere, the food chain and humans, not a pretty picture. You will never look at plastic the same way again.

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.

Blumenthal

The presence of famed New York playwright Harold Blumenthal looms over everyone in the weeks following his unexpected death, but life goes on for his family. In attempting to distinguish between the forces they do and don’t have control over, the Blumenthals address the feelings that are holding them back from fulfillment. Writer, director and co-star Seth Fisher delivers a charming, low-key dark comedy with endearing, heartfelt performances.

Blush

Seventeen-year-old Naama is thoroughly bored with her overbearing family and uneventful suburban school days. That is until bleached-blonde bad girl Dana shows up with her flirtatious smile and a bag of weed. But while Naama is both partying hard and falling hard for Dana, her sister goes missing, and the whole family is deeply rattled. Blush is a portrait of modern Israel through the eyes of the youth who are pushing the boundaries. —Alexis Whitman

Bobbi Jene

“I want to get to that place where I have no strength to hide anything.” After a decade of stardom in Israel as part of the illustrious Batsheva Dance Company, dancer/choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith at age 30 pursues a solo career in the U.S. Winner of the Best Documentary prize at the Tribeca Film Festival, Bobbi Jene is a portrait of a dancer which is as unflinching, wondrous and embarrassing as life itself.

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

Notorious for a nude scene in the 1933 film Ecstasy, Hedy Lamarr became a sex symbol for the ages and achieved top stardom in Hollywood. But her deeper passion had to do with mechanics and technology. She was obsessed with creating useful inventions to benefit mankind, and her inventions were predecessors of wi-fi, bluetooth and cell phones. Spurned as too beautiful to be smart, she nonetheless upended stereotypes and serves as a role model to this day.

Born in Auschwitz

This is the story of a Jewish baby who was born in the death camp before the liberation and survived. An extraordinary journey of the second and third generation, breaking the cycle of trauma to free themselves from Auschwitz - forever.

Born in Auschwitz

The untold story of the only Jewish baby who was born in the death camp before the liberation an survived. An extraordinary journey of the second and third generation, breaking the cycle of trauma to free themselves from Auschwitz – forever.

A Bottle in the Gaza Sea

This modern-day Romeo-and-Juliet tale is set in Israel and Gaza. After witnessing a suicide bombing, a girl writes a letter to Gaza seeking understanding and sends it into the Gaza Sea in a bottle. It’s found by a young Gaza man who emails back. Though they live less than 100 kilometers apart, they communicate only through emails and letters. While they often disagree, their relationship deepens as the political situation worsens. [MINIGUIDE 71/70]

The Boy Downstairs

Zosia Mamet of GIRLS fame stars in this twentysomething romantic comedy that borrows the aesthetic and location of the popular HBO show. Mamet plays Diana, an aspiring writer who moves back to New York City after living in London. Three years ago she left behind mensch and loving boyfriend Ben (Matthew Shear). Now she returns to discover that he lives in the apartment below hers. Things are about to get complicated.

Brave Miss World

About This Film

The Bubble

Eytan Fox (Walk on Water, Yossi and Jagger) continues his extraordinary run of sleek, chic films that define the contradictions of modern Israeli life. A trio of charming gay and straight twenty-somethings share a flat in a hip Tel Aviv district. But the carefree “bubble” they live in threatens to burst when one of them falls in love with a young Palestinian man.

Budapest Noir

This classically styled hardboiled detective yarn explores how Hungary reacted to the rise of the Third Reich.

Budrus

When Palestinian Ayed Morrar learned the Israeli security barrier would veer from the border separating Israel and the Palestinian territories, and would instead cut through his West Bank village, he decided to organize, galvanizing both Palestinians and Israelis in an effective strategy of nonviolent protest. This groundbreaking documentary neither romanticizes nor demonizes the many viewpoints it reveals, instead capturing with raw intensity the power of ordinary people fighting peaceably for change.

Bugsy

Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel has a dream—or is it a mirage?—of a casino named the Flamingo rising out of the Nevada desert. What Siegel doesn’t gamble on are construction delays or falling in love, and he falls hard for actress Virginia Hill (played to perfection by Annette Bening). Warren Beatty’s tour de force performance as the sexy, psychotic New York gangster shines among excellent turns by Ben Kingsley and Harvey Keitel.

Bye Bye Germany

“After World War II approximately 4,000 Jews stayed in Germany. Later, none of them could explain to their children why,” we learn in Sam Gabarski’s Bye Bye Germany. This stylized, humor-laced drama devotes itself to answering this question by portraying the lives of a sundry group of survivors who remain in Germany immediately after liberation and are led by a charismatic, top hat–wearing jokester (Run Lola Run’s masterfully expressive Moritz Bleibtreu).

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.

Censored Voices

Oral histories recorded by Israeli writer Amos Oz and other young kibbutzniks in the weeks immediately following their experience during the Six Day War are brought to life in this revealing documentary. The censored 1967 recordings, coupled with striking archival images, reveal the moment that Israel’s soldiers, in their own words, went from identifying with David to Goliath. The act of trying to remember is what gives this documentary its profound resonance.

Charlatan | 2021 Freedom of Expression Award Agnieszka Holland

Legendary Polish filmmaker and recipient of SFJFF's Freedom of Expresson Award, Agnieszka Holland's newest film is a richly drawn biopic of Czech healer Jan Mikolášek who rose to fame through his uncanny ability to diagnose disease with a mere glance at the patient's urine.

Chasing Portraits

Moshe Rynecki’s granddaughter is on a quest to recover the Polish-Jewish artist’s works lost during World War II.

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