Westchester (Virtual) Jewish Film Festival

admin Posted OnOctober 13, 2020

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Westchester (Virtual) Jewish Film Festival: The Jacob Burns Film Center’s annual Westchester Jewish Film Festival (WJFF) goes virtual in 2020 with twelve cinematic narratives and documentaries from Israel, Hungary, France, Ethiopia, the US, and other countries. The festival will open on Wednesday October 14 with a conversation between Series Curator Bruni Burres and JBFC Founding Director of Film Programming, Brian Ackerman. Burres is a senior consultant with the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Program and is the cowriter of Beyond My Grandfather Allende, which won Best Documentary at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. A virtual pass to the festival, which runs through October 27, offers access to all twelve films. Each film is available for a pre-defined 48 hour period. Here are some of the highlights of this year’s festival.

My Polish Honeymoon: The film portion of the Westchester Jewish Film Festival opens on Thursday, October 15 with a contemporary romantic comedy that garnered the Emerging Filmmaker’s Award at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival for Director Elise Otzenberger. The story follows Adam and Anna, a Parisian couple’s honeymoon in Poland; a commemoration of Adam’s grandfather’s village destroyed 75 years ago, and Anna’s sleuthing to uncover her mysterious family history. Available: Oct. 14 at 10:00 am—Oct. 16 at 10:00 am.

The Mover: The Mover relates the true story of Zanis Lipke, “Latvia’s Schindler”, a blue-collar Luftwaffe worker in Soviet- and German-occupied Latvia. Lipke moved local Jews from the Riga ghetto to an underground bunker on his property, saving them from Nazi persecution and almost certain death. WJFF pass holders will also have access to a Q&A with Latvian UN Ambassador Andrejs Pildegovičs, the Permanent Representative of Latvia to the UN. Available: Oct. 15 at 10:00 am—Oct. 17 at 10:00 am. (Virtual Q&A on Oct. 19 at 7:30 pm)

Asia: Shira Haas of Netflix’s Unorthodox was lauded by IndieWire for her “hypnotizing performance” in this intimate daughter-mother story about Russian immigrants to Israel. Haas plays a teenage girl struggling for independence from her mother, a hardworking nurse. As she begins to break free, her sudden deteriorating health forces her into a wheelchair and a heady reevaluation of their relationship. Available Oct. 16 at 10:00 am—Oct. 18 at 10:00 am

Fig Tree: Ethiopian/Israeli director, Aäläm-Wärqe Davidian’s narrative debut draws on her memories of growing up in war-torn Ethiopia in the mid-1980s. Fig Tree tells the story of Mina, a 16-year-old Jewish girl who discovers that her family’s plans to flee to Israel means leaving behind her Christian boyfriend who lives in the woods to avoid conscription into Mengistu Haile Mariam’s army. The film won the Ophir Award (Israeli Oscars) for Best Cinematography. Available Oct. 23 at 10:00 am—Oct. 25 at 10:00 am.

Incitement: The Ophir Award-winner for Best Feature Film, Yaron Zilberman’s Incitement chronicles the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin through the eyes of Yigal Amir, the political activist who murdered him. This thriller weaves staged performance with historic news footage revealing the inner thinkings of a man who convinced himself that murder was his duty in an effort to prevent a peaceful solution in the Middle East. Available Oct. 17 at 10:00 am—Oct. 19 at 10:00

The Keeper: This year’s festival will close with The Keeper, the real life story of Bert Trautmann, a German soldier and prisoner of war who, despite British protests, secures the position of goalkeeper for the Manchester City soccer team. Trautmann received support from Rabbi Alexander Altmann, a Manchester City supporter who fled the Nazis, who wrote, “We treat our neighbor as we would want our neighbor to treat ourselves.” Trautmann went on to become a soccer icon, famously playing with a broken neck in the 1956 FA Cup. The Keeper won the Audience Award at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival. Available Oct. 25 at 10:00 am—Oct. 27 at 10:00 am