The Hebrew language documentary, Air Born, delves beneath the surface to examine a little-known facet of the Israeli Air Force, the backbone of Israel’s armed forces. Now available on Izzy, an Israeli streaming platform, this intriguing film looks at the IAF through the eyes of men and women who were raised on its bases between […]
Stella Goldschlag was both a victim and a perpetrator in Nazi Germany. As a Jew, she was constantly persecuted and in danger of being deported to a concentration camp in Poland. Yet because she turned in Jews to the Gestapo to save herself and her parents, she became a Nazi collaborator and an infamous traitor. […]
Barry Avrich’s absorbing and uplifting documentary, The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue, focuses on a shining episode in a chapter of darkness. At the center of it is Noam Tibon, a retired Israeli army general who heroically braved immense danger to save his family on October 7, 2023, a day of infamy in Israel’s […]
In her debut as a director, Scarlett Johansson delivers a generally absorbing movie about Holocaust memory, identity and grief. Eleanor the Great stars June Squibb as Eleanor Morgenstein, a spry and feisty 94-year-old widow whose life is upended when Bessie Stern (Rita Zohar), her roommate and best friend, dies. Bessie’s passing compells her to leave […]
Noel Debre’s French-language movie, A Nice Jewish Boy, deals candidly and fearlessly with a topic that some might prefer to sweep under the rug — the antisemitism that seethes in the “projects” of Paris, the ethnically Arab/Muslim neighborhoods populated by a dwindling number of Jews. This somber film premieres on VOD and all leading digital […]
Alex Kurzem was a very, very unusual Holocaust survivor. He survived as a mascot in a Latvian police unit that had been implicated in the mass murder of Jews. Dan Goldberg, an Australian journalist, tells his amazing story in The Jewish Nazi?, a documentary that will be available on major digital platforms from September 12 […]
Gentrification refreshes and livens up a neighborhood, but often displaces residents who cannot afford far higher rents. Jaffa, a southern extension of Tel Aviv, finds itself exactly in this position today, judging by Jaffa: A Guide To Gentrification, a film by Osnat Trabelsi, Karen Shayou and Lavi Vanounou. It is now available on the ChaiFlicks […]
Canonized by the Vatican in 1992, five decades after he was murdered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, the Franciscan priest Maximilian Kolbe was by all accounts a saintly man and a proud Pole. He was incarcerated in Auschwitz in May 1941, when virtually all of its inmates were Polish political prisoners and its image as […]
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and longest-serving one until Benjamin Netanyahu eclipsed his record, is the subject of Yariv Mozer’s reverent documentary, Memories of Ben-Gurion, which is now available on the Izzy streaming platform. Mozer, in this occasionally engaging 54-minute film, does not even attempt to paint a comprehensive portrait of Ben-Gurion, who was […]
I last saw Judgment At Nuremberg years ago, when I was a teenager. Some films age badly, but after watching it again recently on the Turner Classic Movie channel, I can confidently say that it stands the test of time. It is a fine film that deals accurately and seriously with a historically important subject. […]