Once in a while, a film of pristine and profound beauty comes along, fixating and enchanting a viewer. Igor and the Cranes’ Journey, directed by Evgeny Ruman, is such a film. The Toronto Jewish Film Festival’s Chai Tea & A Movie series will screen in on Sunday, Feb. 9 at 5 p.m. (Tea is served […]
A dowdy middle-aged woman nurses a drink in a singles club in Santiago, Chile. She looks vulnerable and lonely. She perks up as she dances with an old friend, but when she leaves the noisy, smoke-filled club, she is still utterly alone. Gloria, the woman in question, is a divorcee with two grown children. Plain looking, […]
It was freezing cold in Toronto and I yearned for the heat. Weary of the January weather, my wife and I decided to book an all-inclusive package to Cuba. We chose Cuba because it offers what far more expensive destinations in the Caribbean also offer: great weather, nice sandy beaches and comfortable hotels. We had read […]
You may remember this old joke from the 1990s: What is Communism? Answer: The transition between capitalism and capitalism. To this we can now add: What was the Arab Spring? In Egypt, it has been the transition between military dictatorship and military dictatorship, with a brief interlude of Muslim Brotherhood rule. Remember all the nonsense […]
Pakistan has been called “the most dangerous place in the world” by Pakistani journalist Imtiaz Gul, the executive director of the Islamabad-based Centre for Research and Security Studies. Throughout its history, this country of 180 million people — the second largest Muslim state in the world — has been subject to periodic military coups, often […]
Incitement and peace don’t mix, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said recently, referring to a persistent and disturbing pattern in which Israel and Jews are demonized and delegitimized by the institutions of the Palestinian Authority, the representative body of the Palestinians currently engaged in peace talks with the Israeli government. Charging that the PA’s campaign of […]
North American filmgoers are probably familiar with Paul Verhoeven’s Hollywood films — science fiction blockbusters like Total Recall, RoboCop and Starship Troopers, the erotic thriller Basic Instinct and the bust of all busts, Showgirls, which almost ruined his career. It would be fair to say they know much less about his Dutch-language films, from Turkish Delight, one of his […]
Few countries were as traumatized by World War II as Poland. Six million of its 32 million inhabitants, including three million Jews, were killed. The Nazi extermination camps, built to eradicate European Jews, transformed Poland into one big killing field. Poland’s eastern provinces were gobbled up by the Soviet Union, which proceeded to drag it into the […]
Lech Walesa’s astonishing rise to prominence as a modern Polish hero is chronicled with verve and vivacity by Poland’s greatest living film director, Andrzej Wajda, in Walesa, Man of Hope. In sweeping fashion, Wajda charts his historic journey from shipyard electrician and Solidarity trade unionist to political activist, Nobel Prize laureate and power broker. The 128-minute […]
Say this for Bangladesh newspaper editor Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury: He’s an incredibly courageous man. Recently, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for his supposedly subversive articles and his abortive attempt to visit Israel, which citizens of this Asian nation are not permitted to visit. He plans to appeal, but will probably have […]