Hollywood comes to JIFF

An A-List of big names adds an extra layer of glamour to this year's Jewish International Film Festival.

Hollywood sprinkled stardust throughout this year’s program for the Jewish International Film Festival, with enough movie stars among the credits to fill an Oscars after-party. Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway, Dustin Hoffman, Candice Bergen, Judd Hirsch, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jeff Goldblum, Topol, Helena Bonham Carter, Willem Dafoe, Forrest Whitaker, Sarah Silverman and Marcel Marceau are among celebrity names appearing in feature films or narrating the many documentaries that make up the long-awaited return of JIFF to its traditional spring schedule.

BIG NAMES

The festival’s opening and closing night films are both critically acclaimed, star-studded affairs. Set in 1980 Queens, Armageddon Time is a coming-of-age story about sixth grader Paul, who dreams of becoming an artist while his Black classmate Johnny is mercilessly targeted by their racist teacher.

Paul finds himself increasingly at odds with his parents (Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway), for whom financial success and assimilation are key to the family’s Jewish-American identity, while his compassionate grandfather (Anthony Hopkins) presents another view.

Closing night offers the Australian première of As They Made Us, actor Mayim Bialik’s directorial debut, a quirky and non-judgmental portrait of a dysfunctional Jewish family. A divorced mother of two (Glee’s Dianna Agron) struggles to balance family dynamics, between an estranged brother and kooky parents (Dustin Hoffman and Candice Bergen) who refuse to accept her father’s diagnosis, before it's too late.

Charlotte Gainsbourg delivers an outstanding performance in French drama The Accusation, directed by her Israeli partner Yvan Attal. The Farels are a power couple: he is a famous television presenter; she is a renowned feminist writer. When their son, a student at Stanford University, is accused of raping a young Jewish woman, the family's life unravels.

Academy Award-nominated and two-time Emmy-winner Judd Hirsch stars in the uplifting comedy iMordecai as a Holocaust survivor living in Miami who is exposed to all kinds of new experiences and adventures when he buys a new iPhone.

MODERN ISRAEL

Contemporary Israeli life - from sexual politics and social media to racial inequality and religious conflict - is examined in a series of nuanced dramas and docos. In Concerned Citizen, a liberal gay man decides to improve his gritty south Tel Aviv neighbourhood by planting a new tree on his street. But in a well-crafted portrait of white guilt, his good deed triggers a sequence of events leading to the brutal arrest of an African immigrant.

In Karaoke, a semi-retired couple’s lives are gleefully upended when a sexy bohemian bachelor moves into the penthouse of their upmarket Tel Aviv apartment complex. More Than I Deserve tells the story of a single Ukrainian immigrant mother and her 12-year-old son who are deeply affected by their complex relationship with a religious neighbour.

Perfect Strangers is a clever ensemble piece in which seven childhood friends meet for dinner. A lovely evening takes an unexpected turn when they agree to share every text message, call or notification that appears on their phones. Betrayals, secrets and unresolved issues emerge, threatening friendships and marriages.

A young childless Hasidic couple are taken advantage of by a sinister visitor in Barren, creating a crisis that raises fundamental questions about religion and faith. The practice of homosexual conversion therapy in the Orthodox world is prised apart in the heartbreaking documentary The Therapy.

ROMANCE & RELATIONSHIPS

A strong selection of romantic films features political thrillers, complex psychodramas and a few delightful rom-coms.

March 1968 is a period drama, focusing on the whirlwind romance of Polish university students Hania and Janek, amid an uprising of antisemitism and police brutality. Hania is Jewish and her parents decide to emigrate after losing their jobs in the growing climate of hostility, but she refuses to leave, propelling her into an uncertain and violent future. This dramatic love story offers a heady convergence of romance, history and politics in a rarely told story of antisemitism in 1960s communist Poland.

Fire Dance, described as “Shtisel meets Succession”, is a new Israeli TV series set in an ultra-Orthodox community. Feigi, 18, who grew up in a broken home without a father figure, fixates on Nathan, 35, the married son of their community’s leader, with tragic consequences.

America presents a psychologically complex story about relationships, with a sensual through-line that keeps viewers guessing. An Israeli swimming coach living in the US reluctantly returns to Tel Aviv for the first time in 10 years to deal with his late father’s estate and reconnects with a childhood friend and his fiancée.

Bloody Murray, an ironic rom-com TV series, features a thirty-something film lecturer with an interest in romantic comedies, and her best-friend and housemate, a gynaecologist. Both successful, bright and single, the young women’s strong friendship is tested when they fall for the same man.

COMEDY

German comedy Love & Mazel Tov offers a clever take on social appropriation and historical guilt. At a party, Daniel pretends to be Jewish to impress Anne, who volunteers at a Jewish retirement home and owns a Berlin bookstore specialising in everything Jewish, despite being a gentile. What begins as a flirtatious fib snowballs into a wild tangle of lies and a comedy of errors.

Two French films deliver laughs with heart. Stay With Us tells the hilarious autobiographical story of internationally renowned comedian Gad Elmaleh’s decision to leave New York and move back to Paris to get baptised and become a Catholic. Rose is a feel-good movie about a devoted Jewish wife, mother and grandmother who refuses to fade into oblivion after the sudden death of her beloved husband.

HOLOCAUST AND WWII

No less than 15 Holocaust-related films in this year’s festival suggests a new generation of storytellers and filmmakers has emerged, ready to tell their families’ stories and other remarkable tales of survival, political intrigue and retribution.

The Auschwitz Report plays like a grim high-stakes thriller, detailing the true story of two Slovakian Jews who worked as scribes in the camps. They risked their lives to bear witness to the horrors of Auschwitz, only to be met with shocked disbelief by the Allies.

Death of Zygielbojm follows the story of a member of the Polish government-in-exile, who committed suicide in London in 1943. A young British journalist investigates, revealing the significance of Zygielbojm’s mission: to convince the indifferent Allies to intervene in the Holocaust.

Isaac, shot in black and white, begins with the recreation of a 1941 Lithuanian massacre of 50 Jewish men. It then shifts to 1964, when the director returns from America to make a film about the notorious event, attracting the suspicions of the KGB. Reckonings documents the untold true story of tense negotiations between Jewish and German leaders to pay post-war reparations to Holocaust survivors.

In June Zero, director Jake Paltrow (Gwyneth’s brother) tells the story of Adolph Eichmann’s 1961 trial and execution through the eyes of three unrelated Israeli characters.

The Burning Cold is a historical drama set in 1943, when life in a peaceful village in the tiny state of Andorra is upended by a family of Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. Valiant Hearts is a suspenseful retelling of the true story of six Jewish children forced to take refuge in 1942 where no one would think to look for them - among the Louvre Museum artworks, including the Mona Lisa, hidden in the Château de Chambord.

Tales of brave Jewish partisans, fighting back against Nazis and their collaborators from the forests of Eastern Europe, are told in documentaries Four Winters and The Partisan with the Leica Camera, which features Melbourne resident Maurie Hoffman.

PALESTINIAN PERSPECTIVE

Prophets of Change is an inspiring documentary examining the lives of musicians and activists from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And Tantura is a confronting investigation into contradictory historical accounts of an alleged massacre of Palestinians in the 1948 war.

WRITERS

Several literary giants’ life stories are writ large in expansive docos. Grossman reveals the inner world of Booker Prize-winning Israeli author David Grossman, whose work has been translated into 45 languages but who rarely gives interviews. The film includes reflections on the death of his son during the 2006 Lebanon War.

A Body in the Service of Mind is a comprehensive dive into the life and art of reclusive but prolific American playwright, poet, novelist and academic Joyce Carol Oates, including her discovery later in life that her grandmother was a Jew who fled Germany and kept her identity hidden.

The Last Chapter of A.B. Yehoshua follows the final months of the beloved writer dubbed “the Israeli Faulkner”, as he reflects on his mortality, heritage and politics - sharp-witted and tart-tongued to the end. Turn Every Page explores the remarkable 50-year relationship between two Jewish literary legends, writer Robert Caro, 86, and his long-time editor Robert Gottlieb, 91, as the two ferocious intellects complete their life’s work together.

Main photo: Anthony Hopkins and Anne Hathaway in Armageddon Time