GENERAL ADMISSION: $10 STUDENTS AND SENIORS: $9 PATRON PASS: $125
Complete schedule, tickets, and passes are available online at nwfilm.org.
location: Northwest Film Center—Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Avenue
Welcome to the 25th annual Portland Jewish Film Festival, produced by the Northwest Film Center and co-presented with the Institute for Judaic Studies. While the Festival celebrates the diversity of Jewish history, culture, identity and filmmaking, we hope that these films, and the stories they tell, resonate beyond their settings and speak to universal experiences and issues that confront our common humanity.
Sunday, June 11, 7 pm
Menashe, US/Israel, 2017
dir. Joshua Z. Weinstein (82 mins., drama, DCP)
Deep in the heart of New York’s ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jewish community, Menashe—a kind, hapless grocery store clerk—struggles to make ends meet and responsibly parent his young son.
Monday, June 12, 7 pm
The Settlers, France/Germany/Israel, 2016
dir. Shimon Dotan (107 mins., documentary, DCP)
Nominated for the Israeli Academy Award for Best Documentary,
The Settlers traces the history and explores the viewpoints—religious and secular, radical and idealist alike—of West Bank settlers since
the 1967 Six-Day War.
Wednesday, June 14, 7 pm
The Women’s Balcony, Israel, 2016
dir. Emil Ben Shimon (96 mins., comedy-drama, DCP)
In this comic feminist narrative a charismatic young rabbi warns that the men of the Sephardic congregation that they haven’t done enough to ensure the modesty of their women, creating a rift that puts faith, friendships, and traditions to the test.
Thursday, June 15, 7 pm
1945, Hungary, 2016
dir. Ferenc Török (91 mins., drama, DCP)
The villagers in a small community in 1945 must face the consequences of “ill-gotten gains” with the prospect of Jews returning home to re-claim their property.
Saturday, June 17, 4 pm
Sunday, June 18, 8 pm
Fanny’s Journey, France/Belgium, 2016
dir. Lola Doillon (94 mins., drama, DCP)
Based on an autobiographical novel by Fanny Ben-Ami, the heroic story of a young girl in World War II France who leads a group of children to safety in Switzerland. Family Friendly.
Saturday, June 17, 6:30 pm
Past Life, Israel, Poland, 2016
dir. Avi Nesher (109 mins., drama, DCP)
Two sisters in Jerusalem, the daughters of Holocaust survivors, investigate a taboo topic: the dark mystery of their difficult father’s experiences in Poland during World War II.
Saturday, June 17, 9 pm
In Between, Israel, France, 2016
dir. Maysaloun Hamoud (102 mins., drama, DCP)
Three Palestinian-Israeli women share an apartment in the vibrant heart of Tel Aviv confronting tradition and modernity, citizenship and culture, and fealty and freedom in a culture in which they are not Israeli enough, not Palestinian enough.
Sunday, June 18, 4:30 pm
Body and Soul: An American Bridge, US 2016
dir. Robert Philipson (60 mins, documentary, DCP)
One of the most recorded songs in the Great American Songbook and a jazz standard, the story of Body and Soul illustrates the complex musical interplay between Jewish and African-American cultures.
followed by
Strange Fruit, US, 2002
Director: Joel Katz (56 mins., documentary, Bluray)
While many people assume Strange Fruit was written by Billie Holiday herself, it actually began as a poem by a Jewish schoolteacher and union activist from the Bronx.
Monday, June 19, 7 pm
Moos, Netherlands, 2016
dir. Job Gosschalk (91 mins., romantic comedy, DCP)
In the endearing comedy set in tight-knit community Amsterdam, 20-something Moos finds out what’s important and the road to following her far-fetched dreams.
Tuesday June 20, 7 pm
Big Sonia, US 2016
dir. Leah Warshawski (93 mins., documentary, Blu-ray)
Spunky 91-year-old Sonia Warshawski survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, but now she has to face another big challenge: her fear of retiring from running her late husband’s tailor shop.
Wednesday, June 21, 7 pm
A Grain of Truth, Poland, 2015
dir. Borys Lankosz (110 mins., drama, DCP)
Lankosz’s crackling detective thriller explores contemporary xenophobia, anti-semitisim and centuries of superstition simmering in the history of Polish-Jewish relations.
Thursday, June 22, 7 pm
Natasha, Canada, 2016
dir. David Bezmozgis (97 mins., drama, DCP)
Mark, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants living in the suburbs of Toronto, enters into a secret and forbidden romance with his strange, newly arrived step-sister, Natasha, with bizarre and tragic consequences for everyone involved.
Saturday, June 24, 4 pm
Monday, June 26, 7 pm
To Be Or Not To Be, US, 1942
dir. Ernst Lubitsch (99 mins., Comedy, DCP)
Jack Benny and Carole Lombard star in this comic espionage story about a Polish theater company in Gestapo-ruled Warsaw. A send-up of Nazi mystique and manners, it also endures as a prime example of the famed “Lubitsch touch”—witty, stylish and broadly satiric.
Saturday, June 24, 6:30 pm
Harmonia, Israel, 2016
dir. Ori Sivan (98 mins., drama, DCP)
This contemporary adaptation of the biblical tale of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar presents a poignant metaphor to the modern day challenges facing Israel’s sibling religions.
Saturday, June 24, 8:45 pm
Beyond the Mountains and Hills, Israel, 2016
dir. Eran Kolirin (92 mins., drama, DCP)
A man retuning to civilian life after decades of military service finds himself, his family, and Israeli society at a crossroads. Nominated for six Israeli Academy awards, including Best Picture.
Sunday, June 25, 4:30 pm
Aida’s Secrets, Israel/U.S./Germany, 2016
dir. Alon Schwarz, Shaul Schwarz (90 mins., documentary, DCP)
Izak Szewelewicz was born inside the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons camp in 1945 and put up for adoption in Israel. Secret details of his birth mother, an unknown brother in Canada, and his father’s true identity slowly emerge in an astonishingly heart felt story.
Sunday, June 25, 7 pm
Moon in the 12th House, Israel, 2016
dir. Dorit Hakim (109 mins., drama, DCP)
When a pair of estranged Israeli sisters—one who stayed at the childhood home to care for their debilitated father, the other who left for a new life in Tel Aviv—are reunited, they must come to terms with the circumstances that tore them apart.
