Jewish Cinema & Culture

This unflinching documentary follows Ahmed and Muhammad, two of the many Palestinians who illegally cross the border into the Israeli city of Modi�in in search of work.

Nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Ajami is a bold crime drama set on the margins of an Arab ghetto. Working with a cast of non-actors in the real streets of Ajami itself, the film deftly meshes characters and conflicts with...

Amos Gitai's ALILA tells the story of over a dozen distinct characters who inhabit an apartment complex located in a rundown neighborhood of Tel Aviv, Israel.

Travel to the four corners of the world in this visually sumptuous series that captures the best examples of the art and architecture of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Each film brings to life the most significant religious buildings of the three...

Oscar Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, BEAUFORT chronicles the final days of an Israeli army unit's tense, painful withdrawal in 2000 from a strategic bunker inside a 12th century Crusader fortress near the Lebanese border, marking the end of...

COLLIDING DREAMS recounts the dramatic history of one of the most controversial, and urgently relevant political ideologies of the modern era. 

DEVARIM is the first of Gitai's acclaimed trilogy of films about life in Israel's major cities (YOM YOM is set in Haifa and KADOSH is set in Jerusalem). Set in Tel Aviv during one very hot summer, it follows the intersecting lives of three young men...

Academy Award® nominee Markus Imhoof (The Boat Is Full, also available) weaves together childhood memories of the Italian refugee girl taken in by his parents during WWII and today’s struggle of refugees fleeing from Africa to Europe.

Winner of the Best Documentary Prize at the Haifa International Film Festival, director Yael Reuvenya's film is a cinematic journey about the Holocaust from a third generation perspective. Siblings Michla and Feiv'ke Schwarz were separated by the wa...

Recognized as the source of the Frankenstein myth, an ancient Hebrew legend provides the substance for one of the most adventurous films of the early German cinema and a landmark in the evolution of the horror film. Suffering under the tyrannical...

Raphaël Nadjari’s extraordinary two-part documentary weaves together clips from more than 70 years of Israeli film with commentary from filmmakers, scholars and critics

Palestinian women volunteers are given video cameras and record the brutality and human rights violations by Israelis that are a part of their daily lives.

"Incandescent" portrayals by two Israeli actresses illuminate the plight of women within Orthodox Judaism today. Using superb cinematography, ethnic music, and authentic Jerusalem locations, Israel's best known filmmaker renders a heartbreaking...

May 1948, some days before the creation of the state of Israel. Upon arrival in Palestine, a boat of concentration camp survivors is confronted by hostile British soldiers. The hopeful emigrants have then to follow the Jewish forces to immediately...

An anti-Semitic far-right politician's astonishing transformation after finding out he is Jewish.

Under the guise of an off-kilter New York romantic comedy, Keep the Change does something quite radical in offering a refreshingly honest portrait of a community seldom depicted on the big screen.

Acclaimed filmmaker Amos Gitai's semi-autobiographical account of the 1973 Yom Kippur war from the point of view of a young soldier. Kippur is not a traditional "blood, guts and glory" war film. There are no men in battle, only the rescue crews...

The Last Resort resurrects Miami Beach of the 1970s, home to a vibrant population of Jewish retirees, through vivid photographs captured by a pair of young artists who dedicated themselves to documenting this unique and fleeting chapter in the...

"An astonishing debut feature."(Variety). The son of a respected elder in a cloistered hasidic enclave unwittingly runs afoul of his father's strict religious doctrine when childhood life prompts questions outside the confines of tradition. A family...

Omar is accustomed to dodging surveillance bullets to cross the separation wall to visit his secret love Nadia. But occupied Palestine knows neither simple love nor clear-cut war. On the other side of the wall, the sensitive young baker Omar becomes...

As the trial of Klaus Barbie is being televised throughout France a family is forced to confront its past in Nazi occupied France. Victor discovers that his mother Rivka (Jeanne Moreau) has been hiding a terrible secret.  Directed by famed...

Ruthie and Or, a mother an daughter, live in a small Tel Aviv flat, out of which the former has been a prostitute for the last twenty years. Or has tried many times to get her mother to quit working the street, but without much success -- and now...

Winner of the script prize at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, Karin Albou's La Petite Jerusalem pits intimacy against sex and ideology against divinity, "with candor, sympathy and excellent cinematography," (Nathan Lee, The New York Times). Offering...

Lauded director Amos Gitai (Kippur) delves into the prelude and aftermath of the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in this gripping docudrama.

Diana Groó’s documentary tells the story of Regina Jonas (1902-1944) a strong woman, who made history by becoming the first properly ordained woman rabbi in the world.

A Russian immigrant teenager's clairvoyant powers create mayhem among the students at Golda Meir Junior High in this jumpy, highly energetic, off-kilter Israel where first love and the apocalypse seem interconnected.

Shaul is a melancholic dreamer, with a tendency to run whenever things go wrong. He returns to Haifa one day for a reckoning with the father he has not seen in 5 years. But getting along with an airy-fairy mother in-law with a penchant for New Age, ...

Muharrem (Erkan Can) lives a solitary existence, strictly adhering to the most severe Islamic doctrines. To his surprise, a religious leader hires him as a rent collector, where he is given Western-style suits, a cell phone and a car with a driver.