Extended Jewish Film Fest includes documentaries, dramas, comedy, more

Kicking off February 13, the 24th Atlanta Jewish Film Festival comes at a time of conflict, ranging from the war in Gaza to our own nation’s Southern border crisis to the wearying early chaos of another presidential election year. It’s a good time to check out new movies from around the globe. This year, you’ll have more time to do so. 

“We’ve extended the festival to 24 days, up from 16 days in previous years,” said the festival Executive Director Kenny Blank. Like other festivals after the pandemic, the Atlanta Jewish Film Fest has had to experiment with different, safer ways of giving viewers access to its titles. Patrons can watch either in person or online but not on the same days. “Building on last year’s first experiment with a hybrid format, we’ve refined our approach to ensure in-theater and virtual screenings complement rather than compete with each other,” Blank said. That means the first 14 days will be in-theater screenings only, followed by a 10-day streaming window of festival highlights for those who prefer to watch from home.

Among other changes (or returns to normal) this year, the festival will again include the newly reopened Tara Theatre among its venues. The others are the Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center, the Plaza Theatre, GTC Merchants Walk in East Cobb and The Springs Cinema & Taphouse in Sandy Springs.

Given the organizing theme of the festival, it’s impossible to forget the Hamas assault in Israel last fall or the ongoing Gaza war — though the vast majority of the films being shown were produced before those developments. 

“The events of October 7 and their aftermath will undoubtedly influence how audiences perceive and interpret certain films in the lineup, as movies often acquire new meanings in light of current events,” Blank said. “As always, we’re presenting a diverse array of films from Israel that engage with historical and current events, providing context and fostering understanding. 

“Notably, we’re honored to host the United States premiere of the first major documentary film about October 7: Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre, a powerful documentary about the tragic attack on the Supernova music festival. These films offer our community a space for reflection during challenging times, aiming to provide solace and meaning through the power of cinema.”

Both Georgia’s largest film festival and the largest Jewish film festival in the world, the Atlanta Jewish Film Fest continues to draw many filmmakers and artists for in-person Q&As following screenings. 

“We are excited to host an extraordinary lineup of guests this year, including actress Sophie Nélisse, known for her role in Showtime’s Yellowjackets, who will join us for the opening night screening of Irena’s Vow,” Blank said. For the world premiere of the 1922 silent feature Breaking Home Ties, the festival welcomes Steve Berlin of Los Lobos, who spearheaded creation of the film’s new soundtrack, and fellow musicians Mocean Worker and Scott Amendola. Director Shira Piven will attend the screening of her film The Performance, starring her brother Jeremy. Puppeteer Shari Lewis’ daughter Mallory will be at the documentary about her mom, and for the Gene Wilder tribute, his wife, Karen Boyer, and Rain Pryor, Richard Pryor’s daughter, will be on hand.

Every year, I ask festival leaders what sort of themes they detect emerging from the latest batch of films. On that topic, Blank said, “This year, our film selection reflects a strong focus on themes of intersectionality, history and identity, in line with [our] mission to bridge cultural and social understanding through storytelling.” He points to Irena’s Vow, David Mamet’s The Penitent, and the North American premiere of Stella. A Life. as examples. “These films challenge audiences to consider what choices they might make when faced with adversity, enriching our understanding of diverse cultures, religions and social groups through the universal language of film.”

Below are short appreciations of 10 films I watched in advance. The majority are rooted in historic record: a 1970s criminal trial in Paris; a theological assault on a child and his family in 19th century Italy; 1930s Palestine chafing under British supervision; and the ghastly actions taken by one young woman in wartime Berlin. These films remind us that the human world we live in is one of constant struggle. At its best, the festival helps us understand that world through the filmmakers’ art and the sense of community that draws movie lovers together every winter for this Atlanta tradition. 

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The Goldman Case

Homework may be required for this fact-based drama from France based on actual courtroom transcripts. In a fierce performance, Arieh Worthalter plays Pierre Goldman, a left-wing intellectual who committed crimes partly as a demonstration of his exceptionalism — a character who feels very much a product of 20th century France. We see Goldman take full responsibility for several bank robberies, but he viscerally (and philosophically) denies involvement in a pharmacy robbery that resulted in the death of several bystanders. A little like recent Oscar nominee Anatomy of a Fall but without the breathing room, Case gets its buzz from courtroom clashes. Shooting in a desaturated palette that makes the film look like a 1970s artifact, Director and Co-writer Cédric Kahn brings up interesting questions about Jewish identity and its bearing on the trial and perceptions of Goldman. But it’s a film easier to respect than to enjoy.

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Irena’s Vow

Best known for Yellowjackets, Sophie Nélisse plays the real-life Irena Gut Opdyke, a devoutly Christian resident of Poland who uses her proximity to her wartime employer, a Nazi commander (Dougray Scott), to shelter a dozen imperiled Jews.  On top of its already complex subject, the movie introduces the issue of abortion in a way that may at first seem awkward, but it reflects the historic facts. This is one of those awkward movies that has its actors speaking English while affecting variable “European” accents, always a weird idea to me. I also wish director Louise Archambault’s film were made with more edge or insight, but its earnest uplift makes Vow a solid choice for opening-night film.  

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Kidnapped

The curious 6-year-old Edgardo asks the ladies taking him on a journey who this “pope” is that they keep talking about. Soon enough, he’ll learn that that Catholic figurehead — Pius IX (Paolo Pierobon) —  is the man responsible for altering both his life and Italy’s political future. The rumor that a servant secretly baptized Edgardo as an infant triggers the pope to have the boy removed from his “heathen” Jewish family in 1858 Bologna and raised in a Catholic school. Yes, this happened. Director Marco Bellocchio renders this story of religious extremism in a handsome production that doesn’t shy away from the fetishism innate in some Catholic (and other religious) rituals. (At one point Edgardo, now an adult and piously Christian, is ordered to lick the floor in penance.) By this mournful drama’s conclusion, there’s no happy ending for anyone.

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The Monkey House

In this enjoyable romp set in 1980s Tel Aviv, long-forgotten novelist Amitay (Adir Miller) woos his lifelong crush Tamar (Shani Cohen) via a convoluted ruse. He hires a wannabe actress to pose as Gal, a young literature scholar from the United States who is in town to research a book celebrating his work. The woman he picks is Margo (Suzanna Papian), a live wire understandably wary at first of this older man’s proposition. But soon, following a Pretty Woman/Pygmalion sequence as Amitay preps her, she gets into the performance as she interviews friends and critics. Things grow more complicated when Margo falls for a visiting documentary filmmaker; the feeling is mutual, but she has to continue pretending to be Gal. Confused? So is everyone at some point in writer-director Avi Nesher’s crowd-pleaser that feels, aptly, like a movie that could have been made in the ’80s. 

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The Performance

Best known for embodying a shallow agent on Entourage, Jeremy Pivens — directed by his sister, Shira Piven — puts on tap shoes and plays Harold, a credible 1936 hoofer in this solid adaptation of an Arthur Miller story. Leading a small group of dancers through European gigs, he’s wooed by wowed audience member Fugler (Robert Carlyle).  Fugler is German, and the dancers are Jewish, and Hitler’s racist measures are strangling the continent. So when Fugler invites the group to dance for a VIP in Berlin, the red flags are waving furiously. Still, it’s showbiz. We watch, partly through our fingers, as Harold’s vanity leads the troupe into danger. The movie’s shoestring budget sometimes shows, but Performance is a decent tale that asks us what we would do in the same situation. 

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Seven Blessings

Midway through the seven dinners hosted by her Moroccan-Jewish family in honor of her marriage, Marie (Reymonde Amsallem, who co-wrote the script) starts to feel that these intended celebrations are more like ordeals. That’s because she has a complicated history as a child sent away during her formative years to live with a childless aunt, an ancient Ashkenazi tradition. Winner of a slew of Israeli Academy Awards, director Ayelet Menahemi’s film captures the joys and exasperation of being flung into a boisterous, large family crammed around multiple tables. We’re asked to unpick the old grievances and half-explained backstories of a great number of characters. It’s to the film’s credit that we’re willing to do that work, leading to a bittersweet, generous conclusion that feels, appropriately, like a hard-won family hug. 

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Shoshana

Like The Goldman Case and Kidnapped, it’s another fact-based drama that might invite some pre-viewing homework. Veteran British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom’s latest depicts 1938 Tel Aviv, with colonizing British forces overseeing the escalating tensions between Jewish settlers and Palestinians. Though she’s the daughter of a famed Zionist leader, English officer Thomas Wilkin (Douglas Booth) romances Shoshana Borochov (Irina Starshenbaum). It’s a doomed relationship, since Shoshana has ties to the Jewish militant group targeting both Arabs and British occupiers. Well-made but a little dispiriting, Shoshana’s unintentional takeaway, for me, is that Israel was and continues to be the geographic epicenter of heartbreak.

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Shari & Lamb Chop

I thought of Barbie watching this documentary — not the hit movie, but the toy itself and her late-1950s emergence. Those were also the years when Shari Lewis, born Phyllis Naomi Hurwitz, was filling early television airwaves with her puppetry act. After scoring with an hour-long Saturday morning show for kids, Lewis and Lamb Chop (the fluffy, coy alter ego curled on her right fist) were booked by NBC for five live hours of TV each week. Singing, dancing and learning 36 pages of script for each episode, Lewis had an astonishing work ethic. The documentary suggests this drive was both a saving grace and sometimes her undoing. At its best, the film offers insight to Lewis in the early days, finding a creative, even spiritual soulmate in Lamb Chop (chief among other puppets) and treating kids with respect more than a decade before Fred Rogers pulled on a cardigan and moved into the neighborhood. Full disclosure: I had the pleasure of interviewing director Lisa D’Apolito onstage after a screening of her previous film, Love, Gilda. Like that one, her newest is a tender, informative portrait of an entertainer worth remembering. 

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Stella. A Life. 

Imagine you’re barely 20 with big dreams of becoming a jazz singer. But it’s 1940, you’re in Berlin and, despite your blue eyes and dyed blond hair, you’re Jewish. That’s the dilemma facing Stella Goldschlag (Paula Beer), who initially reacts to strictures against Jews with petulance. “I’m still so young,” she whimpers, thinking only of herself as news comes of trains heading daily toward Auschwitz. When she has to choose between the fate of others and her own skin, she slowly, then eagerly becomes a “catcher” for the Nazis — naming names and pointing out other Jews. Like Kidnapped, it’s a devastating examination of a soul whose identity is split into parts by history and who comes to betray her own heritage. Beers delivers a fearless performance as Stella — naive, self-justifying then brassily sociopathic. The actor makes no excuses for the woman she’s playing, showing her in her later years as a confirmed narcissist, even when on trial for her wartime betrayals. Directed by Kilian Riedhof, it’s a movie less to enjoy than to be haunted by. 

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Where Is Anne Frank

This animated, educational feature aimed at younger viewers centers on an unusual heroine. Kitty is the fictional, red-haired best friend to whom Anne Frank addressed all her daily entries, now magically released from the diary’s pages and wandering the wintry streets of contemporary Amsterdam. Her quest to find out what happened to Anne is the educational part of the movie, and it works well enough. Less successful is writer-director Ari Folman’s attempt to make an equivalency between the modern migrant crisis in Europe and the extermination of Jews in WWII. The film is an interesting experiment that doesn’t quite cohere. 

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Steve Murray is an award-winning journalist and playwright who has covered the arts as a reporter and critic for many years. Catch up to Steve’s current streaming column here.