The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia

2010 NoVA International Jewish Film Festival Selected Film Summaries

Brothers
Switzerland/Israel, 2008, Hebrew with English subtitles, 116 minutes
Director: Igaal Niddam

Two brothers, who have been estranged for years, struggle to come to terms with their very different religious and political beliefs. Dan is an ardent Zionist and secular sheep farmer on a kibbutz. Aaron has lived in New York for many years and is an Orthodox Jew. The two men seek to reunite and bond as family. However, a high profile legal case dealing with the rights of Talmudic students to refuse to serve in the Israeli military tears their family apart. The brothers’ personal conflict is echoed in the legal battle around the separation of state and religion in modern Israel.

Circumcise Me (Film Festival Closing Film)
USA/Israel, 2009, English, 54 minutes
Director: Matthew Kalman

This hilarious documentary about Philadelphia-born Yisrael Campbell is guaranteed to have you in stitches. Born Catholic, now an Orthodox Jew living in Jerusalem, Campbell is one of Israel's top stand-up comedians and is called the "The Matisyahu of Comedy." This charming film traces his journey from Catholic to Reform, then to Conservative and finally to Orthodox Judaism, and the stops along the way.

Eli and Ben
Israel, 2009, Hebrew with English subtitles, 91 minutes
Director: Ori Ravid

Eli is 12-years old and his world is turned upside down when his father, the City Architect of Herzliya, is charged with taking bribes. Eli is convinced that his father is innocent, but proving it isn’t easy. Eli wrestles with real life ethical dilemmas and his love for his father.  Forced to question everything he believes in, Eli sets out to restore the reputation of his father while navigating questions of trust and friendship.

Father’s Footsteps
France/Israel, 2008, French and Hebrew with English subtitles, 95 Minutes
Director: Marco Carmel

In the early 1970s, the Maimons, a rambunctious but tight-knit Tunisian-Israeli family, settle in Paris seeking adventure and fortune. Felix, Mireille and their two young sons rely on each other, especially when Felix’s minor crimes escalate to bank robbery after he meets a local Jewish gangster. Eleven-year-old Michael always thought of his father as a “superhero,” and discovers that maybe his definition of hero needs to change.
 
“This is my story,” explains writer/director Carmel. Because of bad decisions my dad made, we entered a world that was a bit abrupt. He went to jail and my family found itself alone.”

For My Father
Israel/Germany, 2008, Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles, 102 minutes
Director: Dror Zahari

Terek, a young Palestinian on a suicide mission in Tel Aviv, is given a second chance when the fuse on his explosive vest fails to detonate. Forced to spend the weekend in Tel Aviv awaiting its repair, Terek befriends several Israelis, including the beautiful Keren, who has cut off contact with her Orthodox family and upbringing. An unlikely love blooms between these two isolated and damaged individuals, who were raised to be enemies.

Hey, Hey, It’s Esther Blueburger
Australia/USA, 2008, English, 103 minutes
Director: Cathy Randall

Esther Blueburger has thick glasses, parents who don’t understand her, a pet duck, and no friends at her hoity-toity school where her classmates are mostly blond and look identical. She and her twin brother are approaching their Bar/Bat Mitzvah, a rite of passage that coincides with Esther’s inner turmoil. When befriended by Sunni, who goes to the local public school, Esther begins to blossom under the affirmation of friendship. On the road to greater self-awareness, Esther encounters kissing, sex, class differences, questions of loyalty and an indestructible urge to be herself.

Inglourious Basterds
USA, 2009, English, 152 minutes
Director: Quentin Tarantino

This Second World War adventure tells about a Jewish-American revenge squad, sent to occupied France to spread terror among the Nazis. Brad Pitt plays the leader, Lt. Also Raine, a good ol’ boy from Tennessee. He and his motley crew hatch a plot against the Nazis, including Goebbels and Hitler, hoping to assassinate as many as they can. They are opposed by the better trained army and SS. The film is part comedy, part adventure, and offers a very different twist of what happened in World War II to the Jews under Nazi rule. In this film – the Jews are victorious.

A Matter of Size (Film Festival Opening Film)
Israel/Germany/France, 2009, Hebrew and Japanese with English subtitles, 92 minutes
Directors: Erez Tadmor and Sharon Maymon

A 340-pound chef living with his mother, Herzel is a “fish out of water.” He’s fired from a restaurant salad bar because of his “unpresentable” image. Then his weight-loss class dumps him because he keeps gaining pounds instead of shedding them. The relentless pursuit of slim is frustrating for him and for his three seriously overweight buddies in the working-class town of Ramle, Israel. But all that starts to change when Herzl discovers the one place where fat guys can be rock stars: the world of sumo wrestling.

With echoes of The Full Monty, A Matter of Size follows its own tender and funny (and Jewish) path from body shame to body celebration, and from loneliness to love.  Inside this funny movie beats a plus-size heart.

No. 4 Street of Our Lady
USA/Israel/Ukraine, 2009, English, Yiddish and Hebrew with English subtitles, 90 Minutes
Directors: Barbara Bird, Judy Maltz, Richie Sherman
 
If your neighbors were being hunted down and came to your door begging for help, would you risk your life to save them? This remarkable film tells the story of Francisca Halamajowa, a Polish-Catholic woman who rescued 16 of her neighbors during the war.
 
Before World War II, more than 6,000 Jews lived in Sokal, a small town in Eastern Poland, now part of the Ukraine. By the end of the war only 30 survived, half of them rescued by this brave woman. For nearly two years she hid her Jewish neighbors in her tiny home and cooked and cared for them, right under the noses of the Nazis.
 
The film draws on excerpts from a diary kept by one of the survivors, Moshe Maltz, whose granddaughter is one of the filmmakers, and incorporates a reunion between descendants of the survivors and Halamajowa.

Nora’s Will
Mexico, 2008, Spanish with English subtitles, 92 minutes
Director: Mariana Chenillo

A divorcee plots to reunite family and friends by ending her life on the eve of Passover in this affecting comedy set in Mexico City’s close-knit Jewish community. As the film opens, Jose discovers that his ex-wife of thirty years has committed suicide. She leaves behind detailed plans for a final Passover Seder and a mysterious photo that may unlock a longtime secret. As Jose reluctantly prepares for the funeral, a colorful collection of characters assembles in Nora’s apartment, including disapproving rabbis, a devoted housekeeper, a half-blind aunt and the couple’s grown son. As this disparate group meets and tries to comply with Nora’s wishes, they discover a great deal about her and themselves.

Off and Running
USA, 2009, English, 76 minutes
Director: Nicole Opper

With white Jewish lesbians for parents and two adopted brothers, Avery grew up in a unique household. Her choice as a teen to contact her African American birth mother propels Avery into a complicated exploration of race, identity and family. In this documentary, Avery’s efforts to pick up the pieces of her life and makes sense of her identity are inspiring and make us look at the concepts of race, gender and what makes a family.

A Secret
France, 2008, French with English subtitles, 105 minutes
Director: Claude Miller

Lavishly adapted from the award-winning autobiographical novel by Philippe Grimbert, A SECRET is the haunting saga of a Parisian Jewish family torn apart by passion and shame during World War II. Shifting between events past and present, François seeks the painful truth about both his own identity and the identity of his detached, aristocratic parents. A family friend helps François decode the family tragedy that unfolded under Nazi occupation.  A SECRET is a harrowing drama that raises troubling questions about collective memory and the consequences of denial.

Wedding Song
France, 2009, Arabic, French and German with English subtitles, 100 minutes
Director: Karin Albou

Tunis, 1942: Against the Allied bombs and the goosesteps of the Nazi occupiers, two teenage girlfriends (one Muslim, the other Jewish) cling to the bond they’ve shared since childhood. Between these two, there are no secrets. This provocative film maps the intersection of Jewish and Arab cultures and explores female sexuality. Outside the female quarters of home, the world shared by Jews and Arabs is being split by German promises of liberation—they’ll rid Tunis of the French and the Jews. The once friendly Jewish-Muslim relations become tested by politics and the will to survive.