Slawomir Grunberg’s documentary, Don’t Cry When I’m Gone, eulogizes Wanda Sieradzka, a Jewish woman whose life was a mirror reflection of the turmoil that engulfed Poland after Germany’s 1939 invasion and occupation. Premiered at the Polin Museum in Warsaw last year, this absorbing film has since made the rounds of movie festivals and various forums. […]
In the very first scene of Azazel Jacobs’ quiet and quirky movie, The Lovers, which opens in Canada on May 19, an unmarried middle-aged woman, Lucy (Melora Walters), cries as her married lover, Michael (Tracy Letts), tries to console her. Michael’s wife, Mary (Debra Winger), is having an affair, too. Her paramour, Robert (Aidan Gillen), is […]
U.S.- Russian relations are in free fall today, the worst they’ve been since the bad old days of the Cold War. Seven decades ago, however, the United States and the Soviet Union were allies, locked in mortal combat against a common enemy, Nazi Germany. This theme is explored by Frank Capra in his rousing 1943 […]
When one thinks of Israel, one doesn’t usually think of pork, the ultimate abomination in food to Jews who keep kosher. But wait. Pigs are bred, slaughtered and processed in Israel, and Israelis by the thousands consume pork products voraciously. This may come as a rude awakening to Jews in the Diaspora, but anyone who’s […]
Daniel Blake is a 59-year-old carpenter who’s had a major heart attack and is now applying for unemployment insurance. “My marathon days are over,” he says in a reference to his long career. But as he becomes enmeshed in a state bureaucracy that’s supposed to ease his transition to good health again, he sinks to […]
Ferenc Torok’s strong and unadorned film, 1945, opens as a passenger train, its locomotive belching thick black smoke, pulls into into a sleepy station in the Hungarian countryside. It’s a sweltering morning in August of 1945, and a year has elapsed since the end of World War II. As the train hisses to a shuddering […]
The village of Lifta spreads out on the slopes of a steep hill adjacent to the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, which leads directly into the western half of Israel’s capital city. It’s a unique place — the only Palestinian locality abandoned by its residents during the first Arab-Israeli war that was not destroyed by Israel or repopulated […]
Another name for Japan, in case you’re interested, is Ramen Nation. This refers to the craving Japanese people have for ramen, an iconic soup made of broth, garnished with noodles and topped with ingredients such as vegetables, seaweed, bamboo shoots, dried fish, a hard-boiled egg, chicken or pork. Ramen was supposedly brought to Japan by […]
Csanad Szegedi was an antisemite before becoming a Jew. A leader of Hungary’s extreme right-wing Jobbik Party, and the founder of the fascist-style Hungarian Guard militia, he was one of the rising stars of the political scene in Hungary. And then it all came crashing down after he was “outed” as a Jew, a sickening […]
This year’s edition of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, rebranded as the Toronto Jewish Film Foundation, runs from May 4-14. As usual, the lineup is impressive. The films reviewed here deal with a scandal in the powerful Greek Orthodox Church in Israel, the Austrian novelist and refugee from Nazism, Stefan Zweig, and a Polish veteran […]