The National Center for Jewish Film’s Annual Film Festival is set for May 12 – 21, 2024. The festival will offer a vibrant program of new film premieres and rare archive treasures best experienced on the big screen! All screenings will be in person.
Highlights include new films from Israel, Germany, Australia and Italy, with visiting creatives and scholars.
The festival opens with a Mother’s Day celebration: The New England premiere of our 35mm restoration of Mothers of Today, a 1939 Yiddish feature starring Esther Field the “Yiddishe Mama” of 1930s radio.
Since 1976, The National Center for Jewish Film (NCJF) has rescued, restored, and exhibited films that document the diversity of Jewish life.
Sunday, May 12, 1:00 pm – Coolidge Corner Theatre
Mothers of Today – Opening Film!
Q&A with NCJF Directors Sharon Pucker Rivo & Lisa Rivo
85th Anniversary! This essentially unknown 1939 Yiddish film stars Esther Field, the “Yiddishe Mama” of 1930s radio, as an immigrant Jewish widow in New York who suffers the deterioration of her family and Jewish tradition at the hands of neighborhood criminals and the realities of assimilation. A domestic melodrama — with cantors and gangsters! — Mothers of Today is a fun ride, a time capsule, and a rescued piece of Jewish and cinema history. Bring a hanky for the tsuris, and a few insults to yell at the no-goodniks. Directed by Henry Lynn. USA | 1939 | Yiddish with English subtitles. Read More
Sunday, May 12, 4:00 pm – Coolidge Corner Theatre
Kidnapped
Boston Premiere
Legendary Italian director Marco Bellocchio’s latest is a grand, historical fresco depicting a scandalous true story. In 1858, in the Jewish quarter of Bologna, the Pope’s soldiers burst into the home of the Mortara family to take Edgardo (Enea Sala), their seven-year-old son, who the church says was secretly baptized as a baby. Awash in painterly chiaroscuro evoking the masterworks of Caravaggio and Delacroix, Kidnapped is at once a personal, human-scale narrative of a family in crisis, and a portrait of a country on the cusp of revolution. Directed by Marco Bellocchio. Italy | 2023 | Italian and Hebrew with English subtitles. Read More
Wednesday, May 15, 7:00 pm – Coolidge Corner Theatre
The Plot Against Harry
New 4K Restroration – 55th Anniversary
Q&A with Brandeis University Professor Thomas Doherty
Don’t miss this rare screening of one of cinema’s singular showstoppers. Harry Plotnick (Martin Priest), a New York racketeer just out of prison, tries to regain his lost neighborhood turf all while juggling his estranged ex-wife, grown children and ex-brother-in-law. What follows is a verité but slightly surreal world of Mafia barbecues, Kosher catering, call girls, bar mitzvahs, lingerie fashion shows, Cuban-Chinese mobsters, and much more. “Neglected masterpiece…should have become an instant classic—of American Jewish cinema, of gangster movies, of film comedy” –The New Yorker. Directed by Michael Roemer. USA | 1969 | English. Read More
Thursday, May 16, 4:00 pm – Coolidge Corner Theatre
Shoshana
Massachusetts Premiere
Set in British Mandatory Palestine, this gripping historical thriller from celebrated British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom (A Mighty Heart) weaves a story of star-crossed love with one of political radicalization and violence. On the eve of the WWII, tensions are high in Tel Aviv where the British control a mixed Arab and Jewish population in Palestine. English police officer Thomas Wilkin (Douglas Booth) and Jewish journalist and activist Shoshana (Irina Starshenbaum) are passionately in love. But political unrest is escalating. Based on real people and events. Directed by Michael Winterbottom. UK | 2023 | English and Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles. Read More
Friday, May 17, 1:00 pm – Coolidge Corner Theatre
Blind at Heart
New England Premiere
Based on Julia Franck’s international bestselling novel Die Mittagsfrau, Barbara Albert’s film adaptation is a richly textured portrait of one woman’s struggle to maintain selfhood in an increasingly hostile landscape. Hélène (the mesmerizing Mala Emde) arrives in Weimar-era Berlin as a young woman with aspirations of becoming a doctor. As the city’s carefree ambiance darkens and tragedy befalls her fiancé, Hélène’s grief gives way to a determination to keep her half-Jewish lineage a secret. Directed by Barbara Albert. Germany/Switzerland | 2023 | German with English subtitles. Read More
Sunday, May 19, 11:00 am – Coolidge Corner Theatre
Stella. A Life.
Massachusetts Premiere
Q&A with Brandeis Prof. Laura Jockusch, who is writing a book on Stella Goldschlag
Stella, played by the magnetic Paula Beer (Never Look Away, Transit, Frantz), is a talented young woman in Nazi Berlin working as a Jazz singer despite the repressive climate and the risk of passing as a non-Jew. When tides turn and she is captured by the Gestapo, Stella faces the most dire and deadly of choices: face deportation to Auschwitz for herself and her parents or become an informant for the Gestapo identifying Jews hiding in Berlin. This provocative drama is based on the true story of Stella Goldschlag who delivered hundreds of fellow Jews to the Gestapo and was put on trial after the war. Nominated for four German Film Awards. Directed by Kilian Riedhof. Germany/Austria | 2024 | German with English subtitles. Read More
Sunday, May 19, 2:30 pm – Coolidge Corner Theatre
Revenge: Our Dad the Nazi Killing
New England Premiere
Q&A with Brandeis Prof. Laura Jockusch, author of two books about revenge and trials after the Holocaust
In this murder mystery documentary, three brothers and a decorated private detective in Melbourne Australia investigate a rumored family secret. Was their father Boris, a suburban family man, Holocaust survivor and Jewish WWII partisan leader, actually involved in revenge killings of Nazis in 1950s Australia. Featuring cold case police reports, government files and home movies, Revenge opens up a secret history of Nazi fugitives, Cold War spies, covert Jewish vigilante networks and government conspiracies. The film asks the fundamental question: is it ever justified to take the law into your own hands. Directed by Danny Ben-Moshe. Australia | 2023 | English. Read More
Sunday, May 21, 6:00 pm – Coolidge Corner Theatre
Seven Blessings
Boston Premiere
Winner of ten Israeli Academy Awards including Best Picture, Director, Script & Actress, Seven Blessings was Israel’s submission to the Oscars for Best International Film. In early 1990s Jerusalem, a boisterous Moroccan-Jewish-Israeli clan celebrates the wedding of a Moroccan-Jewish bride and French-Ashkenazi groom over the course of seven nights (sheva brachot) occasioning joy, laughter and oh so much delicious food. But behind the joie de vivre are family secrets. With humor, pathos, and confidence, Seven Blessings puts Mizrahi mothers, daughters, and sisters at the beating heart of this rich enveloping story. Written by co-stars Reymonde Amsallem and Eleanor Sela. Directed by Ayelet Menahemi. Israel | 2023 | Hebrew, French, Moroccan with English subtitles. Read More
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