Organized by The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the 26^th edition of the Jewish Film Festival was presented from January 11-24. Considered to be among the most important festivals among the more than 60 Jewish film festivals held each year in the United States the JFF is the oldest Jewish Film Festival in the US. It offers feature, documentary, and short films from around the world encompassing past and present Jewish experiences and the factors shaping them around the world.  The 2017 edition of the festival included 29 feature films and shorts. 26 productions were shown for the first time in New York or the United States including three world premiere productions.  As a tribute to Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder The Producers (1967) had its 50^th anniversary screening at the festival. Some parts of the festival were free and open to the public like the poster exhibition “The Producers and Beyond” focusing on Mostel and Wilder which included a compilation of film and television clips of these actors. There was no charge either for a master class on documentary film making by Tomar and Berak Heyman or the panel “Film Portraits” by Jens Hoffman on the role and formats of biopics with film makers from productions selected for this year’s festival.  In April 2017 the NYJFF will continue its free off-season Artist Focus series at the Jewish Museum with new films transcending the visual arts and cinema led by Jennifer West.

Most screenings of the festival were sold out and catered to a well-established, though slightly aged, upscale audience. The New York Metropolitan area includes more than 2 million Jews, it is the largest urban concentration of Jews second only to Tel Aviv. Among the appealing offerings were:

Moon in the 12th House, Dorit Hakim, Israel 2016. This film opened the festival with a convincing narrative, superbly delivering Hakin’s first feature film. The film centers on two estranged sisters, Lenny and Mara though they are bonded emotionally. They were separated for a long time because Mira left for an adventurous life in Tel Aviv while Lenny was raised in a boarding school. She returned to live at home to take care of her disabled father who does not communicate and withdraws into watching television. Whereas Mira runs a night club and is involved with a drug dealer.  Lenny has a predictable solitary existence confined to the father and occasional taking care of an adolescent boy whose mother is away. When Mira comes to visit Lenny conflicts between their life styles and divergent aspirations erupt until seemingly resolved on the surface.

Past Life, Avi Nesher, Israel, 2016.  Two sisters are also the focus for this film; Nana is an outgoing passionate writer and her sister Sephie a quiet classical musician, both raised by a strict father who works as a gynecologist and a somehow withdrawn mother. The parents are holocaust survivors.  Accidentally, the sisters come across material that sheds doubts on the father’s record in Poland during the Second World War implying that he could be among the guilty.  Nana insists on investigating the father’s past life and getting answers about his activities during the war. However, after discussions in Israel, Poland, and Germany with people who knew their father, no clear evidence about his role emerges. The answer to their question is a diary he kept during the war which the sisters eventually locate and authenticate. The narrative of this film is rather complex but Nesher succeeds in executing it well and making Past Life a compelling mystery feature depicting the sensitive issues of coping with the burdens of the past linked to the holocaust.

Peshmerga, Bernard-Henry Levy, France, 2016.  Accompanying over a period of six months the slowly advancing Kurdish troops fighting Islamic State soldiers Levi presents an outstanding documentary record of the of the Kurdish fighters. Through superbly photographic images in close and wide shots, birds eye drone images of the areas controlled by the Islamic State, exposure to the everyday life of the combatant and interviews with the Kurdish soldiers and their officers, the viewer becomes embedded in the struggle and comes to understand the driving force of the Kurdish involvement, the establishment of a Kurdish state.  This motivation persists against all odds.

Stefan Zweig, Farewell to Europe, Maria Schrader, Austria/ France/Germany, 2016 Schrader conveys in five parts and an epilogue a portrait of Stefan Zweig’s exiled life in the United States and Latin America. In official encounters he was glorified by politicians and fellow exiles yet to the consternation of his audience he refused to condemn publicly the Third Reich because for him such statements taken without risk were meaningless unless followed by effective action. He traveled widely and embraced Brazil as reflected in his 1941 book ‘Brazil: Land of the Future’ and moved to the German colonized small Brazilian town of Petropolis in 1940. Yet even in his beloved Brazil his mind remained homeless and he could not see starting a new life at his age. In his suicide note he revealed “my own language having disappeared from me and my spiritual home, Europe, having destroyed itself.” He concluded, “I salute all my friends! May it be granted to them yet to see the dawn after the long night! I, all too impatient, go on before.”

 Claus Mueller   filmexchange@gmail.com