Beautiful music with compelling stories
The 30th San Diego International Jewish Film Festival is underway. These aren’t your big-budget Hollywood blockbusters. These are indie films with heart that speak to who we are as a people. I managed to...
The making of an international Jewish film festival
You can tell a lot about any of the 35 movies to be shown at the 30th annual San Diego International Film Festival (SDIJFF) Feb. 13-23 by when it will be screened, and in some...
Upcoming Netflix docuseries focuses on story of Nazi guard John Demjanjuk
A new Netflix docuseries centers on the story of a retired Ukrainian-American autoworker in Cleveland who was accused of being “Ivan the Terrible,” one of the Holocaust’s most notorious SS guards.
In the 1980s, a...
“Why we hate”: Steven Spielberg’s documentary that seeks the origin of hate
Xenophobia, holocausts, torture, aggression. Why do we hate humans, what is the origin of hate? These are the questions asked in the documentary "Why we hate". Steven Spielberg is in charge of this project...
OMG, it’s RBG!
It may not be playing at your neighborhood theaters at the moment, but you can be sure the film RBG will hit the screens at least one more time. So while she battles the disastrous disease that...
A pair of Polish films at S.F. Jewish film festival
What do you get when you have two films: a husband with a wife from Paris who wants to bury her one-year-old son’s foreskin in Poland; and a brother and a sister from Toronto...
Film Review: ‘Last’ imagines Nazi who posed as a Jew
In Jeff Lipsky’s film Last, Joshua, a modern Orthodox Jew, and his recently converted wife, Olivia, are sitting in beach chairs, having what started as a pleasant conversation with Joshua’s 92-year-old maternal great grandmother, Claire, about...
Moe Berg’s surprising double life
The Spy Behind Home Plate, a documentary on the life of Moe Berg by Aviva Kempner, opening June 28 at the Landmark Ken Theater, 4061 Adams Avenue, San Diego.
In baseball, an all-around player is one...
Despite pressure, film about rising anti-Semitism in Europe gets Jerusalem screening
After several venues canceled screenings at the last minute, a controversial documentary film directed by U.K. right-wing media figure Katie Hopkins was shown in Jerusalem Tuesday evening at the Uri Zvi Greenberg Legacy House.
In...
‘Leona:’ Inter- faith dating in Mexico
Leona, a name meaning Lioness, is also equivalent to the Hebrew name “Ariela,” by which the protagonist in this 94-minute, Spanish-language, English-subtitled film is known. She is 25 years old living in what might...