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Film

Tel Aviv On Fire

The Arab-Israeli conflict is no laughing matter. But in Tel Aviv On Fire, which will be screened by the Toronto Jewish Film Festival on May 2 and May 4, Sameh Zoabi, a Palestinian director, breaks this mould by means of black humor, using Israel’s long-running dispute with the Palestinians as a source of biting satire. […]

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Film

My Polish Honeymoon

The children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors usually have some kind of an affinity, if only a superficial one, with their parent’s or grandparent’s homeland. This is particularly true in the case of Poland, whose prewar Jewish population of 3.3 million was virtually annihilated by the Nazis and their local collaborators. Elise Otzenberger draws on […]

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Film

Gaza: Expressive Film About The Plight Of Palestinians

The Palestinian Arab inhabitants of the Gaza Strip have been consigned to purgatory since the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948. This theme is fleshed out in Gaza, a sad and expressive documentary by Gary Keane and Andrew McConnell scheduled to be screened at the Canadian International Documentary Festival (Hot Docs) in Toronto on April 30, […]

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Film

Lea Tsemel: Devil’s Advocate Or Human Rights Champion?

Lea Tsemel, an Israeli criminal lawyer, is a polarizing figure in Israel. Critics vilify her as a devil’s advocate. Admirers describe her as a champion of human rights. Rachel Leah Jones, the director of Advocate, a documentary scheduled to be screened at the Canadian International Documentary Festival (Hot Docs) in Toronto on April 28, April […]

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Film

Sunset: Europe On The Cusp Of Upheaval

Hungarian filmmaker Laszlo Nemes brought the unimaginable horrors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp uncomfortably close up in Son of Saul, which won the Academy Award for best foreign picture in 2016. Now, three years later in Sunset, which opens in Canada on April 5, Nemes transports us to fin-de-siecle Budapest on the eve of World […]

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Film

The Brink: A Portrait Of Steve Bannon

Steve Bannon, the fire-breathing American conservative ideologue, is bent on creating a global right-wing populist movement. In Alison Klayman’s absorbing documentary, The Brink, which opens in Canada on April 12, she accompanies Donald Trump’s former chief strategist on trips across the United States and Europe to lay the groundwork for this ambitious objective. A fierce […]

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Film

The Death Of Stalin

The passing of Joseph Stalin in Moscow in 1953 precipitated a power struggle among his grasping associates and potential successors. Armando Iannucci imagines what transpired in his satirical film, The Death of Stalin, which is now available on the Netflix streaming service. Iannucci approaches the topic with an irreverent sense of humor. Nothing is sacred […]

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Film

Sobibor: A Suspenseful Russian Film

Sobibor was a cog in a chain of Nazi extermination camps in German-occupied Poland built to eradicate the Jews of Europe. Upwards of 225,000 men women and children were murdered there in just over a year. In the autumn of 1943, a group of Red Army prisoners of war who had been sent to Sobibor […]

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Film

Never Look Away

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s latest movie, Never Look Away, which opens in Canada on February 22, is a sweeping personal and historic drama about the artistic development of the renowned German painter Gerhard Richter and the turbulence that engulfed Germany during the Nazi era and the division of the country into two politically irreconcilable republics, East Germany and West […]

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Film

Who Will Write Our History

By any yardstick, Emanuel Ringelblum was a heroic figure. As the Nazi occupation of Poland deepened, he began keeping a diary of daily events in the Warsaw ghetto, where he lived. As the oppression intensified and he came to the realization that the Germans were intent on exterminating Polish Jews, he brought together fellow Jews […]