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 […]
Inspired by a true story, Elena’s War focuses on a Jewish heroine in fascist Italy. Scheduled to be screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from June 4-14, Stefano Casertano’s Italian movie revolves around Elena DiPorto (Micaela Ramazotti). Feisty, headstrong and barely literate, she defies all expectations of a woman’s conventional behavior. Divorced, […]
Polish-Jewish relations during the German occupation of Poland were tortuous at best. As the Nazi occupiers ruthlessly exterminated Polish Jews in a methodical campaign of genocide, the vast majority of Polish Christians lay low and reacted with indifference. Still others collaborated with the Nazis, or risked their lives to save Jews. The predominant response of […]
Philippe LeGuay’s The Story of Annette Zelman is a wrenching, heart-felt drama about the intersection of love and betrayal in Vichy France. Now available on the ChaiFlicks streaming platform, it is based on real events. During the Nazi occupation from 1940 onward, a Jewish fine arts student named Annette Zelman (Ilona Bachelier) fell in love […]
Edward Dmytryk’s Crossfire is a distinctive, one-of-a-kind film. It was the first Hollywood B-movie to be nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. And it was the first feature film to deal directly with the issue of antisemitism in the United States, edging out the more famous Gentleman’s Agreement by a few months. Premiered in […]
Free speech, a fundamental pillar of democracy, is under fire at American universities. Once a sanctuary of open inquiry, they have become embroiled in a broader cultural war over the boundaries of free expression, a process that is reshaping higher education in the United States in particular and in the West in general. Ric Esther […]
Mashhad, situated in the northeast corner of Iran, is Iran’s second largest city after Tehran. A Muslim place of pilgrimage, with a population of 3.4 million, it attracts 25 million visitors a year. Despite its renown, Mashhad harbors an embarrassing secret, as the short film, Mashhad, points out. On March 26, 1839, a few days […]