Kiss Me Kosher
The Nashville Jewish Film Festival celebrated its 20th anniversary by proving its resilience and flexibility in 2020. Plans for an in-person fest focused on celebrating two decades of Jewish film programming were transformed into an all-virtual event in response to the pandemic’s theater closures. Now movie theaters around the country and the city are open (and open-ish) again, but due to continued safety concerns, this year’s Jewish Film Festival will once again offer its films for at-home viewing.
The Jewish Film Festival is never a sprawling affair, but rather a more tightly curated one that always manages to gather a dynamic slate of flicks. This year’s roster includes illuminating documentaries, riveting dramas, a student film competition and comedies, with a 48-hour online viewing window for each. NJFF’s opening night — Thursday, Oct. 14 — kicks off with an online screening of comedy feature Kiss Me Kosher. Shira and her non-Jewish German girlfriend Maria want to get married. But before the pair can tie the knot, Shira must convince her family that Maria’s people were all “good Germans” during the war. The families meet up in Israel, and director Shirel Peleg uses the trope of Shira’s younger brother making a school movie to bring an intimate twist to the hilarious chaos.
My Name Is Sara
My Name Is Sara will be available virtually on Saturday, Oct. 16. The drama from Steven Oritt won the Grand Prize at the 2019 Warsaw Jewish Film Festival, and it relates the real-life tale of Sara Goralnik, a Polish Jew whose family was killed by the Nazis in September 1942. Goralnik was just 13 years old when she endured a grueling escape across the Ukrainian countryside before assuming the identity of her Christian best friend.
Nowadays, most young audiences likely think of Howie Mandel as a game-show personality. But long before his judging job on America’s Got Talent, Mandel became a television star playing Dr. Wayne Fiscus on the hospital drama St. Elsewhere back in the early 1980s. At the time Mandel was one of the rising stars in a stand-up comedy renaissance fueled by early cable television’s hunger for affordable programming, and by the popularity of humor-forward late-night TV programming. Howie Mandel: But Enough About Me checks all the boxes of the comic’s decades-long entertainment career while also fleshing out the finer nuances of wearing a rubber glove on your head. Barry Avrich’s documentary screens virtually on Thursday, Oct. 21.
In Tango Shalom, a Hasidic rabbi with a flair for horadancing convinces a professional tango dancer to be his partner in a bid to win a contest and raise some much-needed funds for his impoverished yeshiva. What’s the problem? The rabbi is happily married and forbidden to touch another woman. In director Gabriel Bologna’s choreographed comedy, it takes a Catholic priest, a Muslim imam and a Sikh holy man to negotiate a solution that can save the school. Tango Shalom will be available on Saturday, Oct. 23.
Bully. Coward. Victim: The Story of Roy Cohn
Roy Cohn was still in his 20s when he led the U.S. Department of Justice’s crusade to execute Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as Soviet spies. The real-life courtroom drama made Cohn a hero on the political right and a devil on the left. Cohn doubled down on his anti-communist campaign by becoming Joseph McCarthy’s right-hand man while the pair fomented the aggressively amped-up 1950s version of American cancel culture. As if he needed to be an even more divisive character, Cohn ultimately became a longtime mentor of, and lawyer for, Donald Trump. Regardless of the praise and pejoratives that he inspired, Cohn was a political animal with a cold-blooded understanding of power, and he made a massive impact on America in the 20th century. He was also a complex man made up of secrets and contradictions, which director Ivy Meeropol — granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg — details in her new documentary Bully. Coward. Victim: The Story of Roy Cohn. This one screens virtually on Tuesday, Oct. 19.
These are just a handful of the films screening as part of the Nashville Jewish Film Fest over the next month. Visit nashvillejff.net for more details on all of the films, as well as scheduling and ticketing information.
