SPECIAL PRESENTATION
Sunday, February 2, 7:00 pm (at Levis JCC)
999: The Forgotten Girls
Directors: Heather Dune Macadam & Beatriz Calleja, 80 min, English, French, and German with English subtitles
The first official Jewish transport to Auschwitz consisted of 999 Slovak girls and young women. This documentary features several survivors from that transport.
Sponsored by The Samuels Family
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Saturday, February 8, 7:00 pm
Bliss
Director: Shemi Zarhin, 125 min, Hebrew with English subtitles, 2024
A married couple must confront painful truths in this insightful, observational drama.
A Zoom Q&A with director Shemi Zarhin will follow the Opening Night screening.
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Sunday, February 9, 1:00 pm
Day of Shorts
Sunday, February 9, 3:30 pm
The Blond Boy from the Casbah
Director: Alexandre Arcady, 126 min, French with English subtitles, 2023
Follows the childhood of the filmmaker Antoine Lisner. He travels to Algiers to present a feature-length film while being accompanied by his son, who was the same age as him when he left Algeria in 1962.
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Sunday, February 9, 7:00 pm
Exile of the Musicians
Director: Iván Cherjovsky, 60 min, English, German, and Spanish with English subtitles, 2022
Between 1933 and 1945, more than one hundred Jewish musicians fleeing Germany and Austria took refuge in Argentina, where they resumed their careers in the country’s theaters, orchestras, radio stations, conservatories, tango venues, and film studios. The musicologist Silvia Glocer researches their lives, recovers their works, and interviews their descendants. Once she has gathered all the pieces of the puzzle, we see Glocer organize a grand concert in homage to these all-but-forgotten figures. Filmmaker Iván Cherjovsky will be in attendance.
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Monday, February 10, 1:00 pm
The Stronghold
Director: Lior Chefetz, 117 min, Hebrew with English subtitles, 2023
After sustaining a surprise Egyptian attack during the Yom Kippur War, a desolate Israeli outpost falls under siege. While the surviving soldiers prepare for a final, hopeless battle, the Doctor comes up with an alternative plan that may save them, but comes at a heavy price.
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Monday, February 10, 3:30 pm
Come Closer
Director: Tom Nesher, 107 min, Hebrew with English subtitles, 2024
When Eden's brother tragically dies, her grief spirals into obsession after discovering his secret girlfriend. A haunting exploration of love, loss and fixation with stunning visuals.
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Monday, February 10, 7:00 pm
Beethoven’s Nine
Director: Larry Weinstein, 85 min, English, 2024
In early 2023, filmmaker Larry Weinstein set out to make a documentary about Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. It was supposed to be about how far we have come in the two hundred years since it was written. But when world events pull Larry into his own film, the question becomes a deeply personal one.
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Tuesday, February 11, 1:00 pm
Midlife
Directors: Danni Raisfeld & Yariv Horowitz, 98 min, Hebrew with English subtitles, 2024
Jonathan fulfilled his dream of becoming a pilot, like his father. On his 40th birthday, he discovers that he missed his wife Sarry, when he cheated on her. When the cancer is discovered in her body, he tries to fill in the gaps. Sari says that in the past she refused to help her young and wild sister Ahinoam and now she asks him to help her reconcile them. With the help of a charismatic rabbi, the whole family meets in a communal and spiritual settlement, and begins the middle of life.
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Tuesday, February 11, 3:30 pm
Eva’s Promise
Director: Steve McCarthy, 56 min, English, 2022
On a train to Auschwitz, 15-year-old Eva, the posthumous stepsister of Anne Frank, promised to retrieve her brother’s hidden artwork should he not survive the war. Eva’s Promise introduces the teenage painter and poet Heinz Geiringer and his sister’s commitment to share his remarkable legacy with the world.
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Tuesday, February 11, 7:00 pm
Resilient
Director: Chava Floryn, English and Hebrew with English subtitles, 2024
Join somatic healer Chava Floryn, a PTSD survivor, in a documentary post-October 7th, exploring trauma’s impact and wartime resilience in Israel. Hear survivors’ and frontline voices, witnessing Israeli resilience amid the ravages of war.
Director and film subject Chava Floryn will be in attendance for a Q&A session!
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Wednesday, February 12, 1:00 pm
Wanted: Roni Kalderon
Directors: Erez Laufer & Hilla Medalia, 100 min, English, Hebrew, and Portuguese with English subtitles, 2024
At 17, he was the greatest promise of Israeli football. The offer to play for Ajax football club was the beginning of a journey that started with football, but soon turned into drug trafficking, entanglement with international law, and a mythical disappearance.
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Wednesday, February 12, 3:30 pm
Going Pro
Director: Andre Oziol, 62 min, USA 2025, English
This captivating film dives into the unpredictable world of professional surfing, where each wave holds the potential to shape a life and redefine a dream. The film follows Andre Oziol, a determined athlete on his quest to go pro, as he confronts intense competition, personal setbacks, and the challenges of embracing his identity as a Jew.
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Wednesday, February 12, 7:00 pm
The Glory of Life
Directors: Judith Kaufmann & Georg Mass, 98 min, German with English subtitles, 2024
Because of the power of love, the last year of Franz Kafka's life becomes his happiest. He has never before been able to allow himself to experience intimacy, he suffers from tuberculosis and is dependent on his overbearing family. But the worldly wise Dora Diamant accepts him as he is. And he accepts her. The two meet in 1923 on the Baltic Sea coast, where he is convalescing and she is working in a Jewish Volksheim. Together they go to Berlin and, when Franz's health deteriorates rapidly, to a sanatorium in Austria. Barely a year after they meet, he dies. The memory of their time together will shape Dora for the rest of her life.
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Thursday, February 13, 1:00 pm
Leaving Paradise
Director: Ofer Frieman
Cleo fulfilled his dream: to leave the big city with his wife and fifteen children, to establish a family commune on a farm in Brazil. Exploring their family-roots leads the children to discover their surprising heritage, which undermines the existence of the communal paradise.
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Thursday, February 13, 3:30 pm
For the Living
Directors: Marc Bennett & Tim Roper
Ten-year-old Holocaust survivor Marcel Zielinski's 60-mile journey from Auschwitz to Krakow in 1945. In 2019, cyclists retraced his path in "Ride for the Living," reflecting on humanity's capacity for dehumanization and empathy.
Sponsored by Donna Ganslaw
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Thursday, February 13, 7:00 pm
Blind at Heart
Director: Barbara Albert
After WWII, Helene is ready to do anything to start a new life. As a young woman, she came to the exciting Berlin of the roaring 20s, wanting to become a doctor, and soon fell in love with a man named Karl. But the course of her life took a drastic, irreversible turn when the Nazis came into power.
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Friday, February 14, 1:00 pm
The Milky Way
Director: Maya Kenig
Tala, a desperate single mother of an unplanned baby, goes to work in a human dairy, where new mothers express breast milk for wealthy mothers who can't or don't want to nurse.
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Friday, February 14, 3:30 pm
One Big Happy Family
Director: Matt Sohn
When a DNA test completely upends a woman's life, she embarks on a journey with her mother to find out who she is.
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Saturday, February 15, 7:00 pm
31 Candles
Director: Jonah Feingold, English, 2024
Leo Kadner, a 30-year-old New Yorker, has a Bar Mitzvah after reconnecting with his childhood crush Eva Shapiro. To complete his Mitzvah project, Leo must deal with situationships, exes, and family while on a deadline.
