Columbia Jewish Film Festival

Spiritual Zydan, not interested in any of the above, suffers from heart failure. His guru suggests he sets out on a voyage to find true love…

They’ve been to the army; they’ve seen it all. They are handsome and manly, but also unbelievably immature. Three forms of a complex and vulnerable Israeli man struggling with the best of all emotions: love.

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The Concert
February 11 at 8:00 pm and February 14 at 6 pm
119 minutes | French and Russian with English Subtitles

Twenty-five years after losing his position as the conductor of the Bolshoi Orchestra for his refusal to fire the Jewish musicians, a once-famous musical director attempts to stage a late-career comeback. Andreï Semoinovitch Filipov (Aleksei Guskov) was at the top of his game when the Soviet regime ended his career. More than two decades later, he's working as a janitor in the same theater where he once conducted. In his spare time, Andreï and his wife stage mock communist demonstrations to entertain the locals. When Andreï happens across an invitation to Paris' famed Théâtre du Châtelet, he contacts his old orchestra friends in hopes of staging a performance that will bring the crowd to their feet for a standing ovation.

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Freedom Writers
February 10 at 2:30 pm with Educational Forum
123 Minutes | English

Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them. Her students had been written off, and her chances of succeeding scoffed at, but Erin Gruwell wasn't about to go down without a fight. Long Beach is a place where a new war is waged with each passing day, and when the hardened students who walk those dangerous hallways sense an outsider attempting to understand their plight, their cynical resentment threatens to keep a deadly cycle in motion. Despite the initially hostile reaction she receives in the classroom, Gruwell uses the writings of Anne Frank and Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo to teach her students not only the basis of the English language, but compassion and tolerance as well. Later, when the time comes to tell their own tales in a project specially designed to explore the daily violence that the majority of students have grown numb to, the barriers that had once stood so strong gradually begin to crumble. When the only chance for survival is to befriend the person who was once your mortal enemy, the world is opened to a whole new realm of possibilities

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Hava Nagila (The Movie) A Documentary
February 9 at 8 pm Special Feature Movie and B'nai Mitzvah Party
80 minutes | English

It is instantly recognizable – musical shorthand for anything Jewish, a happy party tune that you dance to at weddings, bar mitzvahs and even at Major League Baseball games. It conjures up wistful smiles, memories of generations past…and no shortage of eye rolling. But as audiences will discover in Hava Nagila (The Movie), the song is much more than a tale of Jewish kitsch and bad bar mitzvah fashions. It carries with it an entire constellation of history, values and hopes for the future. In its own believe-it-or-not way, Hava Nagila encapsulates the Jewish journey over the past 150 years. It also reveals the power of one song to express and sustain identity, to transmit lessons across generations and to bridge cultural divides and connect us all on a universal level.

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Kaddish for a Friend
February 12 at 6 pm with Educational Forum and February 13 at 8:00 pm
94 minutes | Arabic, German, Russian with English subtitles

A Russian Jewish WWII veteran and Palestinian teen form an unlikely friendship in the tragicomic Kaddish for a Friend, a stirring debut by Moscow-born German filmmaker Leo Khasin. Growing up in a Lebanese refugee camp, 14-year-old Ali (Neil Belakhdar) has learned to hate Jews before escaping with his family and relocating to public housing in Berlin’s Kreuzberg quarter. He tries to gain acceptance among his Arab peers by targeting an elderly Russian Jew, Alexander (Ryszard Ronczewski), vandalizing the old man’s apartment and defacing the walls with anti-Semitic graffiti. Threatened with deportation, the teen is forced to apologize, sparking a feisty relationship with Alexander, which evolves from mutual distrust to codependence. Based on actual events and embodying the spirit of building bridges of understanding, Kaddish for a Friend unfolds with gritty realism and a light touch.

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A Matter of Size
February 11 at 6 pm & February 14 at 8:30 pm
90 minutes | Hebrew with English Subtitles

A Matter of Size is an Israeli comedy (yes, comedy!) like nothing you've seen before, a hilarious and heart-warming tale about about a coming out of a different kind: four overweight guys who learn to love themselves through the Japanese sport of sumo wrestling! Herzl (Itzik Cohen) has been struggling with his weight ever since he was young, and his overbearing mother made it no easier on him. His friends Aharon (Dvir Benedek) and Gidi (Alon Dahan) struggle with the issue of weight in their personal lives as well; from fear of losing a spouse to a "thinner" man, to coming out as a gay bear. When Herzl loses his job as a cook and starts washing dishes in a Japanese restaurant, he discovers the world of Sumo, where large people such as himself are honored and appreciated. Through the restaurant owner Kitano (Togo Igawa), a former Japanese Sumo coach (supposedly hiding from the Yakuza in Israel) , Herzl and his friends fall in love with a sport involving "two fatsos in diapers and girly hairdos". However, Herzl's dedication to this demanding men-only sport threatens his budding relationship with Zehava (Irit Kaplan), a plus-size social worker.

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Nora's Will
Sunday, February 10 at 8:00 pm
90 minutes | Spanish with English Subtitles

Nora's Will is a comedy like nothing you've seen before, a truly unique tale of lost faith and eternal love from one of Mexico’s most talented new filmmakers, writer/director Mariana Chenillo. Nora's Will was named Mexico’s Best Picture of the Year, taking home seven Ariel Awards. Chenillo is the first female director ever to win Mexico’s Best Picture award. When his ex-wife Nora dies right before Passover, José (Fernando Luján) is forced to stay with her body until she can be properly put to rest. He soon realizes he is part of Nora's plan to bring her family back together for one last Passover feast, leading José to reexamine their relationship and rediscover their undying love for each other.

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Saviors in the Night
February 10 at 6 pm & February 12 at 8:30 pm
97 minutes | Hebrew, French and German with English Subtitles

Saviors in the Night (Unter Bauern) is based on the memories of Marga Spiegel. In her narrative, published in 1965, she describes how courageous farmers in southern Münsterland hid her, her husband Siegfried {named Menne} and their little daughter Karin from 1943 until 1945, thus saving them from deportation to the extermination camps in the East. The film tells this story of survival with a sense for the absurd in daily life and not without the typical Westphalian humor. Without reservation, the farmers offer the refugees their protection. That this turns them into heroes would never occur to them. They are used to weathering even dangerous situations somehow, guided only by their instinct and century-old code of ethics. They risk their own lives, and, if necessary, even that of their families. There is never a discussion about friendship, reliability, humanity. In Yad Vashem the farmers’ names are immortalized: Heinrich Aschoff, Hubert Pentrop, Bernhard Südfeld, Heinrich Silkenböhmer, Bernhard Sickmann. Saviors in the Night wants to create a memorial in honor of these silent heroes.