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Heart of Stone

Before 1960, predominantly Jewish Weequahic High School in Newark, NJ, graduated some of the top students in the country. By 2000, the school had devolved into a breeding ground for gang violence in one of the nation’s most dangerous cities. Heart of Stone is a moving portrait of a bold principal who reaches into the school’s successful past to give his students a hopeful future.

Heir to an Execution

Ivy Meeropol’s compelling debut documentary about her grandparents Julius and Ethel Rosenberg is fascinating. She interviews Rosenberg contemporaries, but the most intimate and raw moments are with the director’s father and uncle. In a family that was ruptured by execution, orphaning of children, and the conspiracy of silence by relatives, Meeropol’s film is a fierce and compassionate reclamation of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as people. Ivy Meeropol and Michael Meeropol in person in San Francisco and Berkeley.

Hello I Must be Going

Celebrated character actress Melanie Lynskey (Heavenly Creatures, television’s Two and Half Men) gives a breakout performance as Amy Minsky, a thirtysomething divorcee, back under the suburban Connecticut roof of her parents (a wonderful Blythe Danner and John Rubenstein). Spending her days in sweatpants watching old Marx Brothers movies, Amy has put her life on hold, waiting for something or someone to ignite the spark lacking in her life.Sundance 2012, Opening Night Film[MINIGUIDE 68/70]

Henri Dauman: Looking Up

As one of the preeminent photographers of the 20th century, self-taught Henri Dauman took the international photojournalism scene by storm with his cinematic images that redefined the methods of capturing historical icons. Leaving behind his past as an orphaned Holocaust survivor, Dauman created a new life for himself in New York City, where his timeless style quickly gained momentum amidst high society and celebrity culture. Exploring both the photographer's traumatic past and the contrasting vibrancy of the city that would define his work, director Peter Jones's film is a testament to the resilience and perseverance of the man behind the camera.

Here One Day

Nina Williams Leichter, the brilliant wife of a New York state senator, committed suicide by jumping from her apartment window. Years later, her daughter, filmmaker Kathy Leichter, returns to her parent’s home and discovers audiocassettes in which her mother reveals the extent of her mental anguish. This powerful personal statement threads together the disparate strands of Williams’ sorrow, ultimately becoming a moving evocation of life itself.

Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust

This astute and masterful documentary explores post-Holocaust questions of faith and a father’s hope for a more tolerant world. Daum and his wife Rivka undertake a journey to Poland with their sons, both of whom are married Orthodox yeshiva students living in Jerusalem. The Daums are seeking traces of their families’ history, including the Polish family who hid Rivka’s father during WWII.

Hitler's Children

Filmmaker Chanoch Ze'evi interviews relatives of high-ranking Nazi officials, who struggle with the guilt of their terrible family legacies.

Holy Land

Gripping from start to finish, Holy Land documents the lives of those who call the West Bank home as you’ve never seen them before. Following three Israelis and three Palestinians, from an ultra-orthodox Jewish settler to a left-wing Israeli activist to a young Palestinian protestor, over the course of a year, this fascinating documentary paints a complex portrait of the people who live, fight and sometimes die for the land they consider holy.

Holy Silence

Holy Silence, a thought-provoking new documentary, examines the role of Vatican and US leaders in shaping the Church's response to the rising Nazi threat and antisemitism spreading across Europe.

Hot House

Nearly 10,000 Palestinians are incarcerated in Israel today. Most Israelis regard these “security prisoners” as criminals but to the Palestinians they are freedom fighters, and martyrs. Granted extraordinary access to the highest-security institutions, filmmaker Shimon Dotan uncovers a startling truth: Israeli prisons have become a breeding ground for the next generation of Palestinian leaders and a hotbed for terrorist plots. —David Courier.

How to Change the World

Before it was the world’s largest activist organization, Greenpeace was the love child of an eclectic group of Vancouver neighbors (journalists, scientists, and hippies). United in their opposition to a U.S. atomic test on an Alaskan island, they sailed an aging fishing boat straight for the test site.

How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire

Preceded by Woody Before AllenAfter discovering the journals of his mysterious grandmother Maroussia, amiable English director Daniel Edelstyn sets off to Ukraine where he makes a startling discovery. In his family’s impoverished Russian village, he comes upon his great-grandfather’s vodka factory. Edelstyn returns to the UK with the wide-eyed ambition of importing his own brand of spirits and finds his life forever altered by the woman he never met.[MINIGUIDE 65/70]

Humor Me

This heartfelt father-son comedy starring Elliott Gould, Jemaine Clement and Ingrid Michaelson follows a struggling playwright who is forced to move in with his joke-telling dad in a New Jersey retirement community and learns, as his father often says, "life's going to happen, whether you smile or not.”

I Have Never Forgotten You

After surviving the horrors of the Holocaust, architect Simon Wiesenthal dedicated the rest of his life to hunting down Nazis who escaped prosecution after the war. This documentary details his life and his work with the American War Crimes Unit, which tracked down more than 1,000 Nazi war criminals with his help.

Ida

Poland, 1962. On the eve of her vows, 18-year-old novice Anna meets her estranged aunt Wanda, a cynical Communist judge who shocks the naïve Anna with a stunning revelation

In Between

Sex, drugs, techno, and . . . Arab traditions? What sounds like an unlikely combination exerts a strong emotional attraction in this female dramedy about friendship, love and the search for independence by three young, hip, Palestinian women. When the Muslim—and religious—Nour moves in with hard-partying Laila and Salma, all three begin their own journeys of self-discovery and gain an understanding of the male-dominated society in which they live but refuse to reconcile themselves to.

In Search of Memory

"Memory is everything. Without it we are nothing," says neuroscientist Eric Kandel, winner of the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking research on the physiology of the brain's storage of memories. As he explains, memory is the glue that binds our mental life together and provides a sense of continuity in our lives.

In Search of Peace (Part One: 1948-1967)

About This Film

In the Family

Filmmaker Joanna Rudnick was 27 years old when she discovered she had BRCA—a genetic mutation that is particularly high among Ashkenazi Jewish women. We join Rudnick as she struggles with an impossible decision—whether to remove her healthy breasts and ovaries or risk a staggeringly high likelihood of developing a deadly cancer. The result is a powerful and gripping documentary that is as life-affirming as it is heartbreaking.

Incessant Visions- Letters From an Architect

This artful documentary illuminates the life and work of German Jewish Expessionist architect Erich Mendelsohn. Mendelsohn’s story unfolds through letters exchanged with his wife Luise, both German Jewish emigres fleeing Nazism. Director Dror deftly juxtaposes the architect’s original drawings with contemporary views of his buildings, weaving in interviews with architects and the people who use these unique structures—a testament to the integrity and timelessness of visionary design.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power

While many sequels do not live up to their predecessors, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is a rare exception. A decade after An Inconvenient Truth, local filmmakers Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk follow Vice President Al Gore as he continues his tireless efforts to alert the human inhabitants of this planet to the catstrophic consequences of climate change and the urgency to take action.

Indignation

The award-winning writer and producer James Schamus (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain) crafts a poignant and faithful adaptation of Philip Roth’s Indignation as his directorial debut. Hailed by Roth himself as the best film adaptation of his work, Indignation is a moving portrait of Marcus Messner, the son of a Kosher butcher who sets off for college in 1950’s Ohio and finds his atheist self at odds with its Christian Midwestern culture.- Lexi LebanScreened at 2016 Sundance Film Festival

Inside Llewyn Davis

New York, 1962. The downtown folk scene. Solo singers, duos and trios are playing the Gaslight and cutting and releasing records. And the talented, abrasive Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is getting beaten to a pulp in the back alley... again. The picaresque and panoramic Inside Llewyn Davis, named after the protagonist's no-sell recording debut, ponders the question: how can someone be an angel when he's singing and playing and a miserable lout the instant the music stops?

The Insult

A minor incident between a Lebanese Christian and a Palestinian refugee turns into an explosive trial that ends up dividing the two communities.

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