February 11-25, 2018
1945
(Hungary, 2017, 91 min., Hungarian with subtitles)
SCREENINGS:
Scottsdale – Thursday, Feb. 15, 7 pm
Peoria – Monday, Feb. 19, 3 pm
On a summer day in 1945, an Orthodox man and his grown son solemnly return to a village in Hungary where villagers are preparing for the wedding of the town clerk’s son. The townspeople – suspicious, remorseful, fearful, and cunning – expect the worst and behave accordingly.
AN ACT OF DEFIANCE
(Netherlands, 2017, 123 min., English/Afrikaans with subtitles)
SCREENING:
Scottsdale – Monday, Feb. 12, 7 pm
Nelson Mandela and his inner circle – some black, some Jewish – face a possible death sentence for conspiracy to commit sabotage after they are arrested by the apartheid South African government during a raid in the town of Rivonia during the summer of 1963. Bram Fischer, a sympathetic lawyer, risks his career and freedom to defend these men.
AMOR
(Israel, 2016, 86 min., Hebrew with subtitles)
SCREENINGS:
Peoria – Thursday, Feb. 15, 7 pm
Scottsdale – Thursday, Feb. 22, 3 pm
After years of wandering through Europe, Daniel, an artist, suddenly returns to his childhood home in Israel. He has come back to see Lila, the love of his life, a former ballet teacher. The dancer, now paralyzed, has been bedridden for more than three years with no hope for recovery. Lila wants to end her life. Can his love face its ultimate test, doing the unimaginable for Lila and giving her the release she cannot achieve herself?
AVALON
(USA, 1990, 128 min., English and Yiddish with subtitles)
SCREENING:
Scottsdale – Thursday, Feb. 15, 3 pm
An evocative and nostalgic semiautobiographical film, by Academy Award-winning writer-director Barry Levinson, traces the various transitions within the Krichinsky family and conveys the anxieties which afflict immigrant families as they assimilate into the more modern American middle class.
BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY
(USA, 2017, 90 min., English)
SCREENINGS:
Tempe – Sunday, Feb. 18, 3 pm
Scottsdale – Sunday, Feb. 18, 7 pm
Peoria – Wednesday, Feb. 21, 3 pm
The film follows the film star’s double career, spending her days acting with the silver screen’s leading men and her nights working on electrical and mechanical inventions which were destined to change the course of the world.
BYE BYE GERMANY
(German, 2017, 102 min., German and English with subtitles)
SCREENINGS:
Scottsdale – Sunday, Feb. 11, 7 pm
Tempe – Thursday, Feb. 22, 7 pm
A smooth-talking salesman, who barely survived the concentration camps and wants to leave for America, is stymied by a tenacious U.S. special agent demanding more information on his wartime activities.
FANNY’S JOURNEY
(France/Belgium, 2016, 94 min., French with subtitles)
SCREENINGS:
Tempe – Sunday, Feb. 11, 3 pm
Peoria – Sunday, Feb. 18, 3 pm
Scottsdale – Sunday, Feb. 25, 3 pm
Following her father’s arrest, 13-year-old Fanny leaves Nazi-occupied France with her younger sisters for an Italian foster home for Jewish children. When they are suddenly left on their own, a brave and resourceful Fanny leads this band of orphans on a trek toward the Swiss border in the hopes of freedom.
HARMONIA
(Israel, 2016, 98 min., Hebrew/Arabic with subtitles)
SCREENING:
Scottsdale – Tuesday, Feb. 13, 7 pm
A modern and layered adaptation of the biblical tale of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, set in the world of the Jerusalem Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor Abraham and his wife Sarah, the orchestra’s harpist, cannot have children. Hagar, a young horn player from East Jerusalem who joins the Western Side Orchestra, offers to have a baby with Abraham for the couple. The child grows estranged from Sarah as the thin line of family balance is shaken.
HEADING HOME – THE TALE OF TEAM ISRAEL
(USA, 2017, 92 min., English)
SCREENINGS:
Peoria – Tuesday, Feb. 13, 7 pm
Scottsdale – Sunday, Feb. 18, 3 pm
In spite of the stereotype that Jews are more cerebral than athletic, the list of Jewish baseball players increases every year. This film follows a team of current and former Jewish Major League Baseball players on their first trip to Israel and their journey to capture Israel’s first baseball championship.
THE INVISIBLES
(Germany, 2017, 110 min., German with subtitles)
SCREENING:
Peoria – Sunday, Feb. 25, 3 pm
The story of four young German Jews in 1943 who manage to survive the Third Reich in Berlin by living in plain sight. Taking on false identities and risky activities, they endure through resourcefulness, luck, and the decency of fellow Germans.
AN ISRAELI LOVE STORY
(Israel, 2017, 93 min., Hebrew and Arabic with subtitles)
SCREENINGS:
Peoria – Wednesday, Feb. 14, 7 pm
Scottsdale – Wednesday, Feb. 14, 7 pm
Tempe – Wednesday, Feb. 14, 7 pm
Director Dan Wolman weaves the love story between two young idealists into the pivotal moments that gave birth to the state of Israel. He juxtaposes youthful and honest romance with the country’s age of innocence in a beautiful story about the coming of age of and in a new country.
ITZHAK
(USA, 2017, 80 min., English)
SCREENINGS:
Peoria – Monday, Feb. 12, 3 pm
Tempe – Thursday, Feb. 15, 7pm
Scottsdale – Sunday, Feb. 25, 7 pm
Showcases the life and music of Itzhak Perlman, widely considered one of the world’s greatest living violinists. It explores the ways in which Perlman’s passion for music allowed him to find a platform for personal expression against tremendous circumstances.
KEEP QUIET
(United Kingdom/Hungary, 2016, 93 min., Hungarian and English with subtitles)
SCREENING:
Scottsdale – Tuesday, Feb. 13, 3 pm
Csanad Szegedi is a notorious anti-Semite and fascist firebrand who undergoes an astonishing transformation after discovering that his grandmother is an Auschwitz survivor and he is Jewish.
KEEP THE CHANGE
(USA, 2017, 94 min., English)
SCREENINGS:
Scottsdale – Wednesday, Feb. 14, 3 pm
Peoria – Tuesday, Feb. 20, 7 pm
New Yorker David leads a very comfortable life until he is mandated to attend a support group for adults with disabilities at the Jewish Community Center. There, he is forced to come to terms with his own high-functioning autism.
PAST LIFE
(Israel/Poland, 2016, 107 min., German, Hebrew, Polish and English with subtitles)
SCREENING:
Scottsdale – Monday, Feb. 19, 7 pm
Two Israeli sisters unravel the shocking truth about their father’s murky wartime experiences in this hybrid detective thriller and heart-tugging melodrama.
PAWN SACRIFICE
(USA, 2016, 115 min., English)
SCREENING:
Scottsdale – Wednesday, Feb. 21, 7 pm
This film chronicles American chess prodigy Bobby Fischer’s terrifying struggles with genius and madness, and the rise and fall of the kid from Brooklyn who captured the world’s imagination.
A QUIET HEART
(Israel, 2016, 93 min., Hebrew, English & Italian with subtitles)
SCREENINGS:
Scottsdale – Tuesday, Feb. 20, 7 pm
Tempe – Tuesday, Feb. 20, 7 pm
A riveting suspense thriller that examines the tensions between Jerusalem’s secular and religious communities where the gulf often seems impossibly large and improbably reparable.
SAMMY DAVIS JR.: I’VE GOTTA BE ME
(USA, 2017, 100 min., English)
SCREENINGS:
PEORIA – Sunday, Feb. 11, 3 pm
Scottsdale – Thursday, Feb. 22, 7 pm
Tempe – Sunday, Feb. 25, 3 pm
Sammy Davis, Jr. had a career that was legendary. This film explores the life and art of this uniquely gifted entertainer whose trajectory blazed across the major flashpoints of American society from the Depression through the 1980s.
SHELTER
(Israel, 2017, 93 min., Hebrew and Arabic with subtitles)
SCREENINGS:
Tempe – Monday, Feb. 19, 7 pm
Scottsdale – Monday, Feb. 19, 3 pm
Two women, trapped in a safe house where nothing is safe and no one can be trusted are at the core of this story, a modern day take on a John LeCarre spy thriller.
THE TESTAMENT
(Israel/Austria, 2017, 96 min., Hebrew with English subtitles)
SCREENINGS:
Scottsdale – Wednesday, Feb. 21, 3 pm
Peoria – Thursday, Feb. 22, 7 pm
A committed historian and his pursuit of the truth behind a Holocaust-era massacre in Austria proves some secrets cannot remain buried forever.
THEY PLAYED FOR THEIR LIVES
(Israel/USA/UK, 2017, 52 min., English)
SCREENINGS:
Scottsdale – Sunday, Feb. 11, 3 pm
Wednesday, Feb. 21, 7 pm
Playing music in the ghettos and concentration camps not only fostered spiritual strength within themselves and others, but often proved a bargaining tool that spared their lives. The documentary follows the personal narratives of eight survivors.
SHORTS
There will be five “shorts” in this year’s Greater Phoenix Jewish Film Festival lineup. The following short films will be shown with some, not all, of the feature films.
THE CHOP
(UK, 2016, 16 min., English)
Yossi, a charismatic Kosher butcher who loses his job, cannot find work at other Kosher butchers, and therefore decides to pretend to be Muslim in order to get work at a Halal butchers.
HOPE DIES LAST
(UK, 2017, 8 min., English)
Inspired by the life of Józef Paczynski, a Polish political prisoner in Auschwitz during the Second World War, who became the personal barber to Rudolf Höss.
WENDY’S SHABBAT
(2017, 10 min., English)
A group of Jewish senior citizens celebrate the weekly Sabbath (Shabbat) at the local Wendy’s fast food restaurant with Hebrew blessings over burgers and fries.
JOE’S VIOLIN
(USA, 2016, 24 min., English)
A 91-year-old Holocaust survivor donates his violin to an instrument drive, changing the life of a 12-year-old schoolgirl from the Bronx and unexpectedly, his own.
IN OTHER WORDS
(Israel, 2016, 6 min., Hebrew)
Trapped in his own memory, a man struggles to find a solution for a moment of great missed opportunity to communicate with his daughter.
VENUES:
Harkins Park West, 9804 W. Northern Ave., Peoria
Harkins Shea 14, 7354 E. Shea Blvd., Scottsdale
Harkins Tempe Marketplace, 2000 E. Rio Salado Pkwy., Tempe
TICKET PRICES:
$11.00 for adults ($13 at the door)
$7 for students (under 25 years with valid ID)
$150 Festival Pass
For more information, ticket packages or group discounts, call 602-753-9366 or visit https://www.gpjff.org/gpjff.org.
