|
Country Categories Genre-Subject Venue
View:
And Then, Violence
After recent Paris terror attacks, and in an increasingly violent and anti-Semitic atmosphere, a young secular Jewish law student questions whether she has become a target in the country she so dearly loves.
More Details
Baba Joon
Israel’s submission to the 2015 Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film surprises in many ways. For starters, the screenplay is almost entirely in Farsi, not Hebrew. The semi-autobiographical feature film debut from writer/director Yuval Delshad depicts three generations in the Morgian family, Persian immigrants from Iran to Israel eking out a living as rural turkey farmers. Sensitive performances, gentle pacing and refreshing plot twists combine to weave a richly satisfying story.
—Emily Kaiser Thelin
Sat, Jul 23, 2016 1:50 PM Mon, Jul 25, 2016 8:20 PM Sat, Jul 30, 2016 2:10 PM Sat, Aug 6, 2016 2:05 PM
More Details
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
Sun, Jul 24, 2016 8:50 PM Sat, Aug 6, 2016 8:55 PM Sun, Aug 7, 2016 8:20 PM
More Details
Fever At Dawn
A Swedish refugee camp doctor gives Holocaust survivor Miklós six months to live. But the young man refuses to die before meeting the love of his life. He sends letters to 117 Hungarian women in sex-segregated camps throughout Sweden. The response of 19-year old Lilli captures his heart and his imagination. Péter Gárdos’s romantic drama, based upon his novel of his parents’ post-Holocaust courtship creates indelible images of heartbreak and hope.
—Sara L. Rubin
Tue, Jul 26, 2016 8:55 PM Thu, Jul 28, 2016 3:45 PM Fri, Jul 29, 2016 9:00 PM
More Details
A Grain of Truth
In this riveting thriller, a woman in a small Polish village is murdered with a knife used for Jewish ritual slaughter. Prosecutor Teodor Szacki (Robert Wieckiewicz, Little Rose, SFJFF 2010) is called in on the case and soon uncovers a town full of deeply rooted anti-Semitism. Based on a best-selling crime novel, this gripping film, which feels like a Polish version of Seven, will keep you glued to your seat until the last frame.
—Tamar Fox
Mon, Jul 25, 2016 1:40 PM Fri, Aug 5, 2016 8:50 PM
More Details
Hounds
After 16 years as a disaffected museum guard, Iris is finally offered a promotion. A careless mistake with a priceless work of art, however, forces her to decide how far she is willing to go to secure her rise up the social ladder.
More Details
How to Win Enemies
Take a classic Woody Allen–style antihero, add Alfred Hitchcock–level intrigue and a strong dose of Argentine sex appeal, and you have this comic, poignant and smart feature. Director Gabriel Lichtmann shows the complicated family relations of Lucas, a young Buenos Aires Jewish lawyer and a mystery buff (he even has a dog named Sherlock) as he solves the mystery of who conned him out of a down payment on a house.
—Emily Kaiser Thelin
Wed, Jul 27, 2016 6:00 PM Thu, Jul 28, 2016 6:30 PM Sun, Aug 7, 2016 8:45 PM
More Details
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 Leban
Screened at 2016 Sundance Film Festival
More Details
Jews in Shorts: Narratives (2016)
Comedy and drama can be found in many places: early ’90s New York, an Israeli drone control center, Paris in the aftermath of the recent terror attacks, Central Park invaded by a 20-piece marching band and an Israeli modern art museum. These are the diverse settings of this year’s dynamic and provocative narrative shorts program where the stories unfold in the most surprising of ways.
- Joshua Moore
Wannabe 16'
Operator 15'
And Then, Violence 15'
What Cheer 17'
Hounds 28'
Thu, Jul 28, 2016 11:30 AM Sat, Aug 6, 2016 4:25 PM
More Details
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.
- Joshua Moore
Screened at 2016 Sundance Film Festival
After the screening of Joshy, Next Wave passholders are welcome to join director Jeff Baena and invited talent from the film for a reception on the Castro mezzanine.
Thu, Jul 28, 2016 8:30 PM
More Details
Mountain
This haunting debut feature from Israeli director Yaelle Kayam explores religious themes in a tale of a young woman’s struggle to find herself. It depicts an Orthodox woman suffering in a loveless marriage, searching for companionship amidst the tombstones, pimps and prostitutes of Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives. Even as the plot turns dark, actress Shani Klein (Zero Motivation, SFJFF 2014) imbues the character Tsiva with an unforgettable tenderness.
—Emily Kaiser Thelin
Wed, Jul 27, 2016 8:55 PM Thu, Jul 28, 2016 8:55 PM Sun, Aug 7, 2016 6:45 PM
More Details
One Week and A Day
When Eyal (Shai Avivi, Sweet Mud, SFJFF 2007) finishes the week of mourning for his late son, his wife (Evgenia Dodina, Invisible, SFJFF 2011) urges him to return to their routine but instead he chooses to gets high with his young slacker neighbor. The two misfits embark on a tragicomical journey to discover that there are still things worth living for in Eyal's life. Director Asaph Polonsky's debut feature offers a humorous and moving depiction of grief and whatever comes next.
Winner, International Critic's Week, Cannes Film Festival 2016
- Joshua Moore
Mon, Jul 25, 2016 9:00 PM
More Details
Operator
A single mom works as a human drone operator, killing people on a daily basis in order to make a living. How much of that spills into her home life?
More Details
Origin of Violence
Nathan Fabre, a teacher in a French-German school, is working on his thesis about the French Resistance during World War II. During a research trip to Buchenwald, he finds a photo of a prisoner with an uncanny resemblance to his father. When his father ignores his queries, Nathan pursues the matter himself, and his research becomes much more than academic, complicated further by his romance with a young German woman.
—Sara L. Rubin
Fri, Jul 22, 2016 6:30 PM Tue, Jul 26, 2016 8:35 PM Fri, Aug 5, 2016 9:20 PM Sat, Aug 6, 2016 6:30 PM
More Details
The People Vs. Fritz Bauer
In late 1950s Germany attorney general Fritz Bauer (played by The White Ribbon’s lauded Burghart Klaussner) is intent on bringing the infamous Nazi Adolf Eichmann to trial. This riveting historical thriller chronicles the hindrances and the potentially mortal dangers Bauer faces as a closeted gay Jewish lawyer working alongside men in the government who can bring criminals like Eichmann to justice but who ultimately have the power to conceal their own Nazi pasts.
—Zoe Pollak
Screened at Berlinale 2016
Sat, Jul 23, 2016 6:30 PM Tue, Jul 26, 2016 6:15 PM Fri, Aug 5, 2016 6:30 PM Sat, Aug 6, 2016 4:10 PM
More Details
Sand Storm
Layla, a teenager in a Bedouin village in South Israel has a cell phone, drives a car, and has a secret boyfriend at the college she is attending. She watches from a distance as her mother accepts her father’s second wife into their family, prompting questions about her own future. This stunning first feature by Israeli director Elite Zexer sympathetically captures the struggle between tradition and modernity in the beautifully stark Negev desert landscape.
- Lexi Leban
Winner, World Cinema Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival 2016
Fri, Jul 22, 2016 8:55 PM Sun, Jul 24, 2016 8:45 PM Tue, Aug 2, 2016 8:25 PM
More Details
Song of Songs
Ukraine, 1905. Ten-year-old Shimek tells his darling Buzya fairy tales of the faraway, imprisoned Tsarevna, as their dreams of inhabiting a larger world beyond the shtetl blend with the first stirrings of young love. An inspired adaptation of the iconic stories from Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman (which also served as the source material for Fiddler on the Roof), a sense of wonder vibrates through the artfully composed Tarkovsky-like images of Hasidic village life.
—Tien-Tien L. Jong
Wed, Jul 27, 2016 12:00 PM Wed, Aug 3, 2016 2:05 PM
More Details
A Tale of Love and Darkness
Natalie Portman makes her directorial feature debut with an adaptation of Amos Oz’s internationally acclaimed autobiographical novel A Tale of Love and Darkness. Set during the birth of Israel, the film examines suffering even after salvation. At its core, Amos’s story is about his relationship with his tragic, complicated mother, portrayed by Portman. Determined to make the film in Hebrew, Portman took eight years to write the script and find funding. The result is a beautiful rendering of the bestseller.
—Neha Talreja
Sat, Jul 23, 2016 8:50 PM Thu, Aug 4, 2016 6:30 PM
More Details
|