Leonard Cohen, the acclaimed Canadian poet and novelist, was only 30 when Donald Brittain and Don Owen of the National Film Board of Canada decided he was worthy of a biopic. Ladies and Gentlemen …. Mr. Leonard Cohen was released in 1965, and in honor of Canadian Jewish Heritage Month, this spare and affecting 44-minute black-and-white […]
Sixty four thousand women and their children are stranded in a bleak refugee camp in an area of northeastern Syria controlled by Kurdish militias. The wives of Islamic State fighters who were either killed in battle or imprisoned after being captured, they yearn to go back to their homes, but their governments have banned them […]
Misha Defonseca’s Holocaust survival story is incredible, beyond belief. At the age of seven, in Nazi-occupied Belgium, she trudged through a forest and kept herself alive by joining a pack of wolves that protected and provided her with scraps of food. In 1997, Defonseca’s memoirs, Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, was published and […]
Maya Sarfaty’s absorbing and affecting movie, Love It Was Not, brings to light a singular story from the depths of the Holocaust. Scheduled to be screened online at the forthcoming Canadian International Documentary Festival (Hot Docs), which runs from April 29 to May 9, it sweeps over the landscape of a love affair that crossed all […]
To its Palestinian inhabitants, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is a source of anger and humiliation. Israeli checkpoints curtail their freedom of movement and Israel’s settlements, military camps and roads divide the West Bank into archipelagos of isolated enclaves, rendering the prospect of a contiguous Palestinian state all but impossible. Farah Nablusi’s film, The […]
Danish career diplomat Henrik Kauffmann was one of the unsung heroes of World War II. A fervent anti-Nazi, he generated newspaper headlines when he declared Denmark’s embassy in Washington independent of the Danish government following Germany’s invasion of Denmark on April 9, 1940. With Denmark cooperating with the German occupying force, he decided he could […]
I missed Green Book when it was released in 2018, but thanks to Netflix, I was able to watch this hugely entertaining and uplifting movie. A drama with comedic overtones, it takes place in 1962, when Jim Crow racial laws were still deeply embedded in U.S. southern states. During this era, African Americans driving through […]
Roald Amundsen was arguably the most renowned explorer of the snow-bound, ice-capped polar regions. The first to reach the South Pole in the Antarctica, he was also the first to circumnavigate the Arctic Ocean. Espen Sandberg’s movie, Amundsen: The Great Explorer, which will be available on VOD platforms on April 6, explores the adventures of […]
It may be hard to believe, but Israel’s occupation of the West Bank has lasted nearly 55 years. I was a young man when Israel conquered it from Jordan during the 1967 Six Day War. In the intervening years, Israel has consolidated its grip on the West Bank, which is presently inhabited by 2.6 million […]
Six Minutes To Midnight, a British thriller directed by Andy Goddard, reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 espionage classic, The Thirty Nine Steps, in terms of its ambience. Be that as it may, Goddard’s movie — which will be available on VOD platforms and in selected Canadian theatres on March 26 — is nowhere near […]