Sharon Angelhart’s Hebrew-language movie, Cuz You’re Ugly, is a closely-observed character study of an obese and unattractive young woman who craves intimacy and recognition. It will be screened at the forthcoming Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which started on June 4 and runs until June 14. In the opening moments of this Israeli feature film, Avigail […]
Oliver Kolker’s Spanish-language movie, I Had The Heart, engages all the senses. A drama from Argentina with pronounced musical elements, it takes place in Buenos Aires as a handicapped mechanic rises to stardom as a tango singer. It will be screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which gets underway on June 4 and runs […]
Grossinger’s, the renowned Borscht Belt resort, is lovingly profiled in a nostalgic documentary by Paula Eiselt. We Met At Grossinger’s will be screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from June 4-14. A year-round destination whose clientele was comprised almost entirely of Jews, Grossinger’s was located in the majestic Catskill Mountains, a Jewish […]
One of the most unusual episodes in the annals of the Arab-Israeli conflict took place in the early 1980s when the former queen of Jordan was directly drawn into the mechanics of a prisoner exchange between Israel and the Palestinians. Duki Dor’s intriguing documentary, Royal Swap, lays it out in voluminous detail. It will be […]
Neta Shoshani’s substantive documentary, 1948 — Remember, Remember Not, delves into the tumultuous events that led to the first Arab-Israeli war nearly 80 years ago. Based on personal letters, diaries and file footage, and supplemented by on-camera interviews, it will be screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from June 4-14. It is […]
Hans Rosenthal was a beloved superstar on West German television from 1971 to 1986. His popular and lucrative quiz show, Dalli, Dalli, was watched by millions. In 1978, he faced an agonizing dilemma. His boss wanted him to host Dalli, Dalli on November 9. This was no innocuous date. It coincided with the show’s seventh anniversary […]
Mothers pamper their children, but the single mom in Netalie Brown’s Israeli feature film wins first prize in this category. Anat (Dana Ivgy) is so protective of her son, Ido (Ben Sultan), that she threatens to emasculate him. Her obsessive actions unfold in Oxygen, a competently-crafted movie due to be screened at the Toronto Jewish […]
Israel’s occupation of the West Bank often interferes with the mobility of its Palestinian inhabitants, especially when they need to travel to Israel. This restriction is one of the sore points of the nearly three million Palestinians in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six Day War. Shai Carmelli […]
A rubber boom in the vast Amazon rainforest more than a century ago prompted a group of adventurous and courageous Jewish men and boys from Morocco to throw caution to the wind and set off to Brazil with little more than high hopes and suitcases. They ventured deep into the largely unexplored Amazonian basin, determined […]
Silwan, a largely Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem near the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, has emerged as a flashpoint in Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians. In the past few years, 28 families, consisting of 160 Palestinians, have been forcibly displaced from their homes in Silwan, according to the United Nations. These displacements, having […]