The first known documentary in Hebrew about Israel’s Arab minority, My Name is Ahmad, will be screened online on June 2 at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival. Directed by Avshalom Katz and Ram Loevy, and released in 1966, this 14-minute short is like a time capsule from a bygone era. They focus their attention […]
The notorious antisemitic campaign launched by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union after World War II is chronicled in exacting and chilling detail in Guillaume Ribot’s superb French-language documentary, The Black Book, which will be screened online on June 3 at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival. Guillaume’s 92-minute film revolves around the Black Book, […]
Sara Goralnik, a 12-year-old Polish Jewish girl, survived the Holocaust by adopting the identity of her Ukrainian friend, Manya Romanchuk. Passing as a Christian, she worked on a small farm in eastern Poland from 1942 to 1944, until it was safe to return to her hometown near the Russian border. Sara’s story of survival unfolds in […]
Before the current coronavirus pandemic walloped the world, the opioid epidemic loomed large, claiming lives on a fairly significant scale. Joey Klein’s movie, Castle in the Ground, delves into that particular facet of the destructive drug abuse problem. Scheduled to open on the Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Telus, Cineplex Store, Apple and Googleplay platforms on May 15, […]
One of the most intriguing footnotes of World War II comes to light in Shadows of Freedom, a vivid documentary by Canadian filmmakers Amos Carlen and Aline Robichaud now available on VOD/Digital platforms. On November 8, 1942, in Operation Torch, a flotilla of more than 100,000 American and British troops landed in Algeria and Morocco, […]
Can Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, given their record of mutual strife, get along? Dror Zahavi, an Israeli filmmaker living in Germany, puts this confounding question to the test in his latest movie, Crescendo, which opens on May 1 in a virtual cinematic release throughout the United States. Zahavi’s impassioned drama is loosely inspired by […]
Michael Winterbottom’s biting satire, Greed, which opens in Canadian theatres on March 6, is a caustic portrait of a fictional self-made British billionaire and a blistering commentary on the fast fashion industry whose downtrodden workers he exploits mercilessly. Retail mogul Sir Richard (Greedy) McCreadie (Steve Coogan) has decamped to the Greek island of Mykonos to […]
Upwards of one million Polish citizens were deported to Siberia by the Soviet Union following its invasion of eastern Poland more than 80 years ago. But in an astonishing twist of fate, some 20,0000 of these refugees left Siberia shortly afterward and migrated to six African countries, bringing a chunk of Poland in their baggage. […]
Matt Ratner’s comedy, Standing Up, Falling Down, often plays out like a doom-laden drama. Wisecracks abound because the central character is a young Jewish standup comedian trying to break into the limelight. Since he’s having trouble carving out a viable career in a crowded and competitive field, levity inevitably gives way to darker moments. The […]
Far from being original, Jojo Rabbit, which won this year’s Academy Award for best adapted screenplay, is the latest film in the past seven decades to poke fun at Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Lest it be forgotten, Nazi Germany was satirized by Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator, Ernst Lubitsch in To Be […]