The recreational use of cannabis is currently illegal in Israel, but medical marijuana is perfectly legal. Working within these parameters, Assaf Abiri and Mattan Guggenheim present Greener Pastures, a feature-length Hebrew-language movie that deals comedically with this contentious issue. Scheduled to be screened online by the Toronto Jewish Film Foundation from November 18-21, it stars […]
Ranked academically above all other secondary schools in San Francisco, Lowell High School is known as an “Asian excellency school.” Its relentless competitive environment forces its majority Asian student body to study hard and achieve high marks as to gain entry into the top universities in the United States. Debbie Lum’s interesting and sometimes heart-wrenching documentary, Try […]
The Gaza Strip, a densely-populated and impoverished enclave ruled by Hamas and blockaded by Israel and Egypt, evokes a sense of grimness and desperation. To outsiders, the everyday lives of its inhabitants are a blank, except when they’re filmed sorting through the ruins of buildings bombed by the Israeli Air Force after yet another cross-border […]
Philip Roth, the great American novelist, was 77 when he agreed to be interviewed for Roth on Roth, a nearly one hour documentary by William Karel and Livia Manera in which he bares his soul. Speaking candidly, he discusses a wide range of issues. Roth on Roth, currently being screened online by the Toronto Jewish Film […]
Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky was one of the titans of the Zionist movement, yet his residency in Palestine, the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, was extremely brief. A cosmopolitan Russian Jew fluent in nine languages, he was both a political theoretician and organizer, as well as a man of letters. During his life, he oscillated […]
Evan Jackson Leong’s grim feature film, Snakehead, takes us into the dark, often violent and ugly world of human trafficking. Currently available on VOD platforms, it is set mainly in New York City’s Chinatown. The chief character is a young Chinese migrant whose credo is survival and who ruthlessly transforms herself into a smuggler. Sister Tse […]
Chaim Nachman Bialik is Israel’s national poet, though he was not born in what is now Israel and lived there for only about a decade. A Russian Jew and a fervent Zionist, he played a central role in the revival of the Hebrew language and culture. A street was named after him in Tel Aviv, […]
Francine Pelletier’s 52-minute biopic, Mordecai Richler: The Last Of The Wild Jews, skims over rather than examines the late Canadian writer’s career. Nonetheless, her documentary, now being screened online by the Toronto Jewish Film Foundation, is thought-provoking and never less than interesting. Released nine years after his untimely death in 2001 at the age of 70, […]
When he was 13 years old, Canadian playwright Jason Sherman received an unusual bar mitzvah gift — a tree planted in his name in Israel by the National Jewish Fund. The JNF, as it is known, is a non-governmental, non-profit charitable organization based in Jerusalem which plants forests and develops land in the Jewish state. Decades […]
It was a rescue mission that riveted a global audience. Three years ago this summer, Thailand was on tenterhooks as divers attempted to save 12 boys and their soccer coach trapped deep inside a flooded cave in the northern part of the country. Thai Navy Seals were called to save the boys, aged 11 to 16, […]