Jewish Stories

Jewish Stories

Yes, there are extraordinary and essential films of remembrance and analysis here, on the Shoah and on Middle East politics (and more of our Israel/Palestine films are gathered here) — but also much much more — JEWISH STORIES encompasses visions of diverse cultures and diasporic communities that define much of our intellectual and cultural life today — from Robert Vas’ classic study of London’s East End THE VANISHING STREET, to Ferenc Toroc’s classic fiction feature film 1945, Chantal Akerman’s dry and compelling Tel Aviv diary DOWN THERE, through to Marcel Ophuls’ Oscar-winning film on Klaus Barbie, HOTEL TERMINUS. In other words, this is a sea of essential stories.

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Jewish Stories
  • Egg Cream

    Directed by Nora Claire Miller, Peter Miller & Amy Linton • Documentary • 2020 • 15 minutes

    EGG CREAM is a short film about the enduring meaning of a beloved chocolate soda drink born on the Jewish Lower East Side. The egg cream contained neither eggs nor cream – it was a product of necessity an...

  • My Fuhrer

    Directed by Dani Levy • Drama • With Ulrich Mühe, Sylvester Groth • 2009 • 92 minutes

    The bastard love child of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator and Mel Brooks’ The Producers, My Führer is a wildly provocative and laugh-out-loud satire about Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich.

    December 1944: ...

  • When Jews Were Funny

    Directed by Alan Zweig • Documentary • With Shecky Green, Howie Mandel, Shelley Berman, Gilbert Gottfried, David Steinberg, David Brenner, Marc Maron • 2013 • 89 minutes

    Insightful and often hilarious, When Jews Were Funny surveys the history of Jewish comedy, from the early days of Borsht belt ...

  • The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg

    Directed by Jerry Aronson • Documentary • With Joan Baez, William F. Buckley, William S. Burroughs • 2005 • 84 minutes

    This documentary chronicles the life of American beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Born and raised in New Jersey, Ginsberg attends Columbia University alongside fellow beats Jack Keroua...

  • Exile, A Myth Unearthed

    Movie + 1 extra

    It has been depicted in artwork, and lamented in poetry and prayer for nearly 2,000 years: the exile of the Jewish people from their homeland in the first century AD.

    But what if it never happened?

    That is the central, provocative question explored in EXILE, A MYTH UNEARTHED, which looks at exi...

  • As If It Were Yesterday

    Directed by Myriam Abramovicz and Esther Hoffenberg • Documentary • 1980 • 84 minutes

    Belgium, 1940. Amidst escalating terror and raids on Jewish residents by the occupying Nazi forces, a resistance movement emerges to shelter Jewish children from deportation and extermination. Myriam Abramowicz...

  • From Swastika to Jim Crow

    Directed by Lori Cheatle • Documentary • 2000 • 60 minutes

    In the 1930s Jewish intellectuals who escaped Nazi Germany and immigrated to the U.S. faced an uncertain future. Confronted with anti-Semitism at American universities and a public distrust of foreigners, many sought refuge in an unlikel...

  • The Two Lives of Eva

    Directed by Esther Hoffenberg • Documentary • 2006 • 85 minutes

    In this emotionally moving and revelatory documentary, Esther Hoffenberg investigates the early life of her mother, Eva (née Lamprecht), interviewing her friends, relatives and acquaintances, and scrutinizing her mother's tape-recor...

  • When Memory Comes: A Film About Saul Friedlander

    Directed by Frank Diamand • Documentary • 2012 • 65 minutes

    WHEN MEMORY COMES: A FILM ABOUT SAUL FRIEDLANDER is a visually arresting documentary that interweaves leading Holocaust historian Saul Friedlander's personal story of survival with an introduction to his work and thought.

    Originally a ...

  • Not A Still Life

    Directed by Roberta Cantow • Documentary • 2014 • 59 minutes

    Not a Still Life is a portrait of Steve Stone, an older gay, Jewish man who shares the naked truth of the struggles, joys and sorrows of his unconventional life a life full of captivating tales. With both humor and raw honesty, Steve t...

  • Free Voice of Labor: The Jewish Anarchists

    Directed by Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher • Documentary • 1980 • 55 minutes

    A dramatic portrait of immigrant life in the U.S. as seen through the eyes of the sweatshop workers who made up the Jewish anarchist movement. Between 1900 and WWI they built trade unions, organized schools, sponsored ...

  • 1945

    Directed by Ferenc Török • Drama • With Peter Rudolf, Bence Tasnadi, Tamas Szabo Kimmel, Dora Sztarkenki • 2017 • 91 minutes

    On a summer day in 1945, an Orthodox man and his grown son return to a village in Hungary while the villagers prepare for the wedding of the town clerk's son. The townspeo...

  • Heimat is a Space in Time

    Directed by Thomas Heise • Documentary • 2019 • 218 minutes

    In HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME, German filmmaker Thomas Heise shares the stories of three generations of his family, in their own words.

    Heise sets the tone early, reading an anti-war essay written in 1912 by his grandfather Wilhelm, whe...

  • Yiddish

    Directed by Nurith Aviv • Documentary • 2020 • 61 minutes

    In Nurith Aviv’s unexpected, original documentary, seven young interviewees share their love for Yiddish avant-garde poetry written between the World Wars. An expressive hybrid “jargon” with roots in Hebrew, German and Slavic languages, Y...

  • A Film Unfinished

    Directed by Yael Hersonski • Documentary • 2010 • 90 minutes

    This potent documentary uses a long-lost film reel to illustrate how the Nazis controlled images of Jewish life during World War II. Though the Nazis made a propaganda movie of contented Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, the missing spool exp...

  • Derrida's Elsewhere

    Directed by Safaa Fathy • Documentary • 2000 • 68 minutes

    An exploration of the man and his ideas, DERRIDA'S ELSEWHERE investigates the parallels between the personal life and the life work of arguably the most important philosopher of the 20th Century, Jacques Derrida.

    The film is woven aroun...

  • Go For Zucker

    Directed by Dani Levy • Drama • With Henry Hübchen, Hannelore Elsner, Udo Samel • 2006 • 91 minutes

    First-class pool shark and all-around hustler Jaeckie Zucker is up to his ears in debt, again. He faces jail, divorce and general ruin. When word comes that his mother has died, leaving an inherit...

  • Harbour of Hope

    Directed by Magnus Gertten • Documentary • With Irene Krausz-Fainman • 2013 • 76 minutes

    In Spring 1945 Red Cross liberated thousands of concentration camp survivors and rescued them to the Malmö Harbour, Sweden. Among the thousands of survivors brought to Malmö were Irene Krausz-Fainman, Ewa Ka...

  • Family Practice

    Directed by Jeshua Dreyfus • Drama • With Dani Levy, Dimitri Stapfer, Sibylle Cano • 2020 • 89 minutes

    Simon has a love-hate relationship with his father. When his parents go on holiday, Simon initiates a seductive game of cat-and-mouse with his father’s mistress and gets disastrously tangled up...

  • Almost Friends

    Directed by Nitzan Ophir • Documentary • 2014 • 58 minutes

    Two girls meet in the “cloud”. 

    Samar, 12, lives in Lod, a mixed city marred by poverty and crime. She has an Arab Israeli mother and a Palestinian father from the Occupied Territories.

    Linor, 11, lives in Tlamim, a religious Jewish se...

  • Tell Them Anything You Want (with Maurice Sendak)

    Directed by Lance Bangs, Spike Jonze • Documentary • With Maurice Sendak • 2009 • 39 minutes

    From Lance Bangs and Spike Jonze, acclaimed director of WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, comes A PORTRAIT OF MAURICE SENDAK, a loving look at one of the most cherished and controversial figures in children's l...

  • So Late So Soon

    Directed by Daniel Hymanson • Documentary • With Jackie Seiden, Don Seiden • 2020 • 71 minutes

    Half a century into their marriage, Chicago artists Jackie and Don Seiden approach the fragility of their elderly lives in their own distinct ways. Jackie, notorious for her unbounded energy, is consta...

  • The Rape of Europa

    Directed by Richard Berge, Nicole Newnham & Bonni Cohen • Documentary • With Joan Allen • 2006 • 117 minutes

    The Rape of Europa tells the epic story of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction and miraculous survival of Europe’s art treasures during the Third Reich and World War II.

    In a jo...

  • There Are Jews Here

    Directed by Brad Lichtenstein, Morgan Johnson • Documentary • 2016 • 89 minutes

    THERE ARE JEWS HERE takes you on a journey to places where most never imagined Jews existed, following the untold stories of four once thriving American Jewish communities that can now barely hold a minyan. Most Amer...