This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles, which has presented over 1000 films over the past three decades showcasing the best in Israeli cinema. The festival began this year on November 9th and concludes on November 23rd, with films screening primarily at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills and the Laemmle Town Center 5 in Encino. Jewcy had the chance to attend two back-to-back screenings this past weekend.

Both films contended at the Ophir Awards, Israel’s version of the Oscars, for Best Picture, losing to another film playing at the festival, Sand Storm, Elite Zexer’s trailblazing Bedouin story that opened in New York at the end of September. Beyond the Mountains and Hills comes from writer-director Eran Kolirin, best known for the international hit The Band’s Visit. One Week and a Day is the full-length feature debut of director Asaph Polonsky.

Beyond the Mountains and Hills introduces David (Alon Pdut), a likable man discharged from the army after twenty-seven years of service. Not sure what to do with his life, David begins attending seminars and starts selling dietary supplements, hosting informational sessions at his home and hitting his friends up to buy the products. This difficulty adjusting to normal civilian life after a long time spent away as a hotshot member of the military is immensely familiar and hardly unique to Israel. One particularly telling scene at the start of the film finds David in the middle of an interview when, upon discovering that his interviewer knows someone he worked with in the army, he finds it most prudent to call the man and have him say hello rather than focusing on pitching himself for the job. It’s a far more comic take than, say, the poignant scene in The Hurt Locker where Jeremy Renner’s returning soldier stares blankly at a daunting cereal aisle, but this film is also considerably lighter than the Oscar-winning war movie.

David’s family also plays a big part in the film, particularly his wife, Rina (Shiree Nadav-Naor), and his daughter, Yifat (Mili Eshet). Rina is a teacher who develops a relationship that borders on inappropriate with one of her students, not unhappy in her marriage but rather entranced by the affection of a much younger man. Yifat is an open-minded free spirit, not content to accept the preconceptions her Israeli society tells her about her Arab neighbors. When an Arab man who hit on her by the side of the road one night is found dead, she travels to his family’s home and meets another young man of whom her family definitely would not approve. Melding some universal issues that are not unique to Israel with others that have everything to do with it as a specific society works especially well in this format. Additionally, one hilarious scene finds David pulled over while driving, with all four members of the family, his son Omri (Noam Imber) included, fully aware that they are guilty of something and expecting to be the one caught for their transgression. To find out who is truly at fault, you’ll have to see the movie, which is extremely entertaining and engaging.

One Week and a Day is a somewhat more serious story of a couple that has just finished sitting shiva for their son following his death from a terminal illness. When their next-door neighbors stop by the day after the shiva has ended, it’s evident that both Eyal (Shai Avivi) and Vicky (Jenya Dodina) are at a loss as to how to move on with their lives. When Vicky goes to the cemetery, Eyal makes up an excuse about staying home to prevent burglary, and instead goes to the hospice where his son spent his final days in search of his lost blanket. What he finds instead is a bag of medical marijuana prescribed for his son, and he enlists the help of the dim-witted son of his neighbors, Zooler (Tomer Kapon, who won the Ophir award for this role), to roll the marijuana for him. As Vicky prepares to go back to her job and restart her life, Eyal retreats inside the house, smoking and playing with the adult child who was once his son’s best friend.

What One Week and a Day covers very deftly is the way that Jewish observance plays a part in secular life in Israel. The death of their son has not turned Eyal or Vicky into religious people, yet shiva is a process that they must go through anyway. The reaction that Eyal has to the end of the mourning period is one of total detachment from reality, smoking endlessly and hanging out with someone he thoroughly detests since he represents something close to the beloved son he has lost. This film takes a humorous approach to dealing with devastation, offering up many laughs in its portrait of grief. When the film finally does introduce dramatic elements, they’re all the more poignant and stirring.

Israeli’s recent success at the Oscars with multiple nominations for Best Foreign Film in the past decade demonstrates that the country’s cinematic industry is well-regarded and on the rise. Its coverage of cultural concepts and handling of the complex issues in the Middle East has been proven, and, if these two films are any indication, Israeli cinema is expanding beyond that to themes that just constitute enjoyable films that deal with everyday elements of life in moving and enthralling ways.  

Read more about the Israel Film Festival and check out the whole slate!

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Serena Dykman is a granddaughter of survivors. She has directed, and appears in, Nana: A Transgenerational Documentary on Tolerance. This groundbreaking film tells the story of her grandmother, Auschwitz survivor Maryla Michalowski-Dyamant, and the journey of her mother, Alice, and herself to come to terms with their past. If you believe that you have seen every statement of resilience and every vision of horror eloquently related, you will find a renewed and different connection to the legacy of the Shoah after you see this film.

Jewcy: How did you conceive of this project, of presenting the experience of your grandmother, who had died when you were eleven years old, to a new generation?

Dykman:  It happened quickly.  I always knew that my grandmother was a survivor. I was completely aware, but I did not understand what that meant.  I am from Paris and Brussels.  I went to Brussels the day of the attack at the Jewish Museum; the next time I traveled to Europe was after the attacks on Charlie Hébdo and the kosher supermarket.  I had been traveling with the memoir my grandmother had written, but I had not opened the book.  When I came back to New York, I realized what she had stood for.  Saddened that she was not here to tell her story, I realized that her message of tolerance and hope needed to be heard by a new generation.

In my last semester at NYU I took a documentary film class.  Three weeks after the course I was filming on location at Auschwitz.  If I had thought carefully, I would not have had the courage to go through with it. I retraced my grandmother’s memories, reading aloud while physically retracing her steps.  Back in NY, many people who had heard about the project sent me archival footage, over 100 hours, including interviews with my grandmother. Then the film started taking a different shape.  I discovered my grandmother more in the editing room than I had in her memoir.

Jewcy:  Some explorations of the lives of survivors, their children, and grandchildren, report the continuation of unspoken trauma, even dysfunction, in these families.  Your film is centered in the strong bond between mother and daughter.  How did your relationship with your mother inform your vision in this film?

Dykman: I have always been close to my mother.  It all came together; I began to realize, to learn, “this is why she reacts this way.”   I finally understood how heavy the weight of the heritage has been for her entire life.  My grandmother was outspoken. As a child, when my mother asked her mother, “where are your parents?” the response she received was that they had been gassed by the Nazis.  The second generation had to suffer for what their parents suffered. They had the responsibility to pass on their parents’ survival story.  It was hard because they were so close. As a member of the third generation, I was close, but not so close that the process would kill me.

Jewcy: Your grandmother’s personality is strong, ironic, proud.  In footage of her interviews by those learning about the Shoah, she seems at times surprised by their naivité. In response to the question, “Why did Hitler choose to persecute the Jews?” she answers “I don’t know. Hitler didn’t confide in me.”

Dykman:  My grandmother was changed by the war, but not completely.  She had an incredible sense of humor. People who see this ask if she was like that before the war.  Her memoir reveals this characteristic in her childhood and teenage years.  After the war she met and married my grandfather, a non-Jewish Pole. She was not, she believed a “regular person.” She educated herself after the war. She studied the Bible and wanted to understand society and human intolerance.   She had been raised in a liberal setting and was not religious.  Speaking for myself, my Jewish identity is more cultural than religious.  People would sometimes ask my grandmother if she believed in God.  She would answer, “After what I just told you, do you think I believe in God?  

Jewcy: Your grandmother relates several instances of the Nazis’ sadistic use of language and of the attempt of your grandmother to subvert this torture.  In one anecdote, she describes hauling rocks as part of her slave labor in the camp.  A Nazi guard repeatedly asks her what she is carrying; every time she answers, “a rock” he threatens her, finally telling her it is not a rock, but a stone. How does your film try to recover language from this lethal assault?

Dykman:  Reading aloud is what started the whole film.  My grandmother had a distinct way of phrasing things. French was not her first language; her syntax was unusual.  Her style was to never complain.  Rather, she would act out what she was saying, but not in a theatrical way.  She speaks as if the story takes place in the present and acts out dialogue.  People who refer to the Holocaust as something that happened seventy years ago hear her speak and learn of its relevance today.

Jewcy: How did recent terrorist attacks in Europe become a framework for your film?

Dykman:  My perspective changed while making the film.  I made the film after witnessing the attacks in Paris and Brussels.  The first screening was after the subsequent airport attacks in Brussels.  What had happened to the Jewish people was also happening to others, and my grandmother’s call for tolerance needed to be timeless. Rather than add references to more specific acts of terror, I wanted to film to be timeless, and to exclude no one. I worked with an amazing editor who understood the framework of the film.

Jewcy:  As your mother states with conviction in one of your conversations about her struggle as a child of survivors, “Long live life. Long live Nana.”

Nana: A Transgenerational Documentary on Tolerance premieres on November 6 (Maryla’s Birthday), at the St. Louis International Film Festival.

Image from Nana.

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If you’re looking for a good Kickstarter project to increase your tzedakah before Yom Kippur, consider Division Ave. The film is fundraising for completion, and it has a strong message of economic and racial justice.

The film explores the ongoing phenomenon that Chasidic homes in Brooklyn hire undocumented immigrants to clean their homes. At times, these women, usually Latina or Eastern European, work in poor conditions, or have no insurance that they will be paid what they were promised.

In Division Ave, Michal Birnbaum plays Nechama, a Chasidic woman who hires Fernanda (Lorena Rodriguez) to clean for her in anticipation of Passover. She learns that Fernanda is having wages withheld by a contractor, and the two form an unlikely team to seek justice. Of course, they discover that they have more in common than they previously thought.

Birnbaum is not only one of the film’s stars, but also its writer. Originally from Bnei Brak, she moved to the United States about five years ago after completing her service in the IDF. She currently works onstage and film, including a role in the recent Nerve and participating in the Jewish “24/6” theatre company. She first heard the story of this practice during a synagogue sermon (around Passover) about modern slavery.

“I was very upset, generally because it’s not a thing that human beings should do to another human being,” Birnbaum told Jewcy. “This is mostly the Jewish community that hires those women. I wanted to explore the situation more.” She got in touch with the Workers Justice Project, a laborers’ rights organization. The more she learned, the more determined she was to tell this story, and she wrote the screenplay for Division Ave, named for the street where women wait for work for the day, for as little as $7 or $8 an hour. But she also sees the difficult situation of the women on the other end of the hiring process.

“More than even immigration, it’s about women, it’s about women living under patriarchy,” she says. “In my film we see the cleaning lady and her struggle, but we also see the Chasidic woman. She’s also under a lot of pressure to be ready for Pesach all by herself.”

This feminist attitude continues to the production team, and directing Division Ave is Ofelia Yanez. “It was clear for me that I want a woman to direct this project,” says Birnbaum.

As she worked on the screenplay, Birnbaum spoke to immigrant cleaning women, as well as women once from or currently part of the Chasidic community. She found many cultural gaps, sometimes wide enough to create tension or distrust. These could be issues such as the fact that non-Jewish women can’t bring their food into the kosher homes where they’re working. In one stark example, Birnbaum also found Chasidic women used to scrubbing on their hands and knees surprised when day laborers claim it’s humiliating and prefer a mop.

“As human beings, as Jews,” says Birnbaum of the cleaning women, it would be better to “do something to make it more bearable for them and just really earn a living with dignity and respect.” She cites the WJP’s guidelines for fair hiring practices, including a written contract, larger minimum pay, full equipment provided, and to move the hiring corner indoors. Birnbaum admits that some Chasidim express racism towards the women they hire, and hopes that there will be more stories like the one told in her film.

As far as the fundraising process, so far so good.

“We’re overwhelmed by so much support from the Jewish community, from the Latin community,” says Birnbaum. “It’s really touching how many people find it important that we can tell the story of those women.”

You know the drill with Kickstarter: There are great rewards and updates for supporters, but funding is all or nothing once the clock runs out. You can watch a video about the film below, and donate before its Monday completion here. 

Image courtesy Division Ave

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Broadway actors and composers. The stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer. A computer-animated Golem sent on a path of destruction. No, it turns out I didn’t imagine this entire thing. Aaron’s Magic Village, also released as The Real Shlemiel, is, well, real.

The 1990s French-made children’s film is a pastiche of Yiddish folk tales, particularly ones written or popularized by Singer. It takes place in Chelm, the legendary shtetl where everyone is a fool (an angel made a mistake). It focuses on an orphan, Aaron, sent to live with his uncle’s family (his best friend is Zlateh the goat). Over the course of the film, Aaron adjusts to the town’s antics, meets a magical imp, and ultimately must face an evil sorcerer who decides to create the Golem and use him for nefarious purposes.

Aaron’s Magic Village, also released in German, actually had a limited theatrical release— extremely limited. I remember being about 7 years old and going to see it with my family; a larger, Orthodox family were the only other people in the theater. (Heck yeah did we later purchase it on VHS for our ongoing viewing pleasure!)

The songs are composed by Michel Legrand with lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. That’s right; the former is the Oscar-winning composer of the likes of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and the latter is the lyricist of Fiddler on the Roof, who over the course of his career has not only garnered Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize, but is the recipient of a lifetime achievement Tony this year.

And the English voice cast?  If you like theatre, it’s star-studded, from Tovah Feldshuh to Chip Zien, to a young Julia Murney; I counted at least 5 Tony nominations among the group. The narrator is even Yiddish theatre legend Fyuvish Finkel.

So with such an amazing amount of talent behind this film, why did it get buried? Maybe it’s too niche; not only Jewish, but full of deep cuts into specific chapters of Yiddish culture (the story about the Chelm man who gets turned around, ends up at home, and lives there convinced he’s in a parallel of his old town? Classic).

Is the quality great? Well, no, but it’s not terrible (The New York Times gave it a mixed review, though the LA Times was less kind). The animation, songs, story, and characters, are at least decent, and Lord knows that children today subject their parents to worse DVD purchases.

And you can purchase the DVD, for only $4 on Amazon. YouTube has the entire film up in German, so if you don’t speak it, consider dropping the price of a kosher slice of pizza for a weird, charming chapter in Jewish cultural history.

In the meantime, you can watch the English-language trailer below:

Image credit: OVGuide.com

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