On July 28, 1959, thieves in Bucharest committed an audacious crime. In broad daylight, they ambushed a truck from the National Bank carrying the equivalent of several hundred thousand dollars in Romanian currency. The theft shocked the Communist leadership and led to the arrest of hundreds of suspects and the production of a unique film. […]
The first ever Hollywood movie about Israel’s struggle for statehood, Sword in the Desert, was released in the United States in 1949, a year after Israel achieved sovereignty and independence. Directed by George Sherman, and based on a short story by Robert Buckner, it appeared eleven years before Otto Preminger’s Exodus. Filmed in California, and starring […]
Leonard Cohen’s signature song, the rich and resonant Hallelujah, has morphed into an anthem beloved by millions of his fans. Yet strangely enough, his record label, Columbia Records, categorically rejected it when it was submitted in 1984, puzzling and crushing Cohen. To this day, it remains unclear why this happened. Not even Clive Davis, a former […]
Menachem Begin, Israel’s sixth prime minister, was a man of peace and war. In his six years and three months in office, from 1977 to 1983, he signed a peace treaty with Egypt, for which he won a Nobel Prize, and ordered the invasion of Lebanon, for which he was widely condemned. Levi Zini’s absorbing […]
Ariel Sharon, Israel’s prime minister from 2001 to 2006, entered office as a hardliner and left as something of a dove. His astonishing transformation is chronicled in Dror Moreh’s biopic, Sharon, which will be available on the ChaiFlicks streaming service from June 15 onward. Sharon is one of the films in its new series, The […]
David Hoffert’s cinematic tribute to the late musician and composer Leo Spellman, The Rhapsody, is a reminder that adversity need not be an obstacle to creativity. His uplifting documentary will be screened at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which started on June 9 and runs until June 26. A Polish Jew from the town […]
Starring a talented all-Arab cast, Eran Kolirin’s subtle satire, Let It Be Morning, unfolds in a remote Israeli Arab village before and after a wedding. Based on a novel by Sayed Kashua, it draws a portrait of the current Arab condition in Israel. It will be presented at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which started […]
Klara Trencsényi was transfixed by Sarah Cohen. “Sarah’s image wouldn’t let me rest,” she says in her documentary, The Missing Tale, which will be screened at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from June 9-26. Cohen, one of the last Jews of Cochin, a town in south-west India, reminded Trencsényi of her Catholic […]
Jews in Eastern Europe once inhabited remote villages known as shtetls. There they lived in splendid isolation for hundreds of years, observing the customs and folkways of their ancestors and speaking Yiddish and the languages of the local region. The Nazis all but destroyed this vibrant and unique culture in just a few short years. […]
David Grossman is one of Israel’s literary treasures. A writer of fiction and non-fiction, his books have been translated into 30 languages and have won an assortment of awards, including the Man Booker Prize and the Israel Prize. In Adi Arbel’s reflective documentary, Grossman, he reflects on his life and career. It will be presented […]