Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival unveiled: A visual mix showcasing Jewish life and history

Several television series will be presented, including David Schalko’s highly praised Kafka, an ambitious look at the tormented writer’s life, and the new Shtisel spin-off, Kugel.

By HANNAH BROWN DECEMBER 12, 2024 01:11

ADRIEN BRODY in ‘The Brutalist.’ (photo credit: Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival)

The 26th Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival at the Jerusalem Cinematheque will brighten the Hanukkah season this year when it opens on December 28, and it will run through January 2.

This festival, which contains a mix of feature films, documentaries, shorts, and animated films, spotlights movies that deal with Jewish life and history, showing the best new films, as well as some classics. A number of the movies’ creators will be on hand to present their films.

The festival will open with The Brutalist, a movie that stars Adrien Brody as visionary Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth, who survives the Holocaust and emigrates to the US. The movie, which is generating major Oscar buzz, won the Best Director award for Brady Corbet at the Venice International Film Festival this year.

Another film that will be shown at the opening is the documentary Marathon Mom by Oren Rosenfeld and Rebecca Shore, the story of an ultra-Orthodox mother breaking stereotypes in her quest to qualify for the Olympics as a marathon runner.

Among the prizes at the festival will be the Schoumann Award for Jewish Cinema, donated by Helen Schoumann, and a new award, the Prize for Representation of the Holocaust, courtesy of the Austrian Cultural Forum.

Jerusalem Cinematheque unveils renovated auditorium (credit: Courtesy)

Several much anticipated films in this year’s festival deal with aspects of the Holocaust in new ways.

Riefenstahl, a new documentary by Andres Veiel about Leni Riefenstahl, the filmmaker whose talent brought Hitler’s propaganda to a new level, delves into her awareness of the Nazi regime’s atrocities, which she denied later in life. Goebbels and the Fuhrer is a drama by Joachim Lang about the man behind Hitler’s propaganda machine, regarded by many as an evil genius.

Dramas, documentaries, and more 

Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5 is a drama that has won much acclaim for telling the story of the massacre of Israelis at the 1972 Munich Olympics through the eyes of American sports journalists covering the story. Jesse Eisenberg’s dramedy, A Real Pain, is about cousins who go on a roots trip to Poland together.

Among the documentaries will be a look at Jerry Lewis’s film, The Day the Clown Cried, a Holocaust movie by the famed comedian that was considered a huge failure and has not been shown in years.

Jeremy Borison’s Unspoken tells the story of a closeted gay teenager in an Orthodox community who finds a love letter written to his grandfather by a man and tries to find him.

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Several television series will be presented, including David Schalko’s highly praised Kafka, an ambitious look at the tormented writer’s life, and the new Shtisel spin-off, Kugel, which will feature a Q&A with its star, Sasson Gabbai.

Daniella Tourgeman is the festival’s director.

For the full program and to buy tickets, go to the festival website at jer-cin.org.il/he