San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 2021 FORUM THREAD

[Chris Knipp]

CHARLATAN (Agnieszka Holland 2020)

The venerable Czech director has been busy in recent years; this is her third feature following SPOOR and MR. JONES. What she is doing with this highly embroidered portrait of a real-life natural herbal medecine healer who diagnosed patients by looking at flasks of their urine - with a gay subplot - is anybody's guess, but it's watchable and handsomely photographed.

Showing in the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival July 22-August 1, 2021 and available online.

[Chris Knipp]

EIN NASSER HUND/WET DOG (Damir Lukacevic 2021)

A young Iranian Jew whose family moves to the tough section of Berlin known as Wedding, finding himself surrounded by Turkks, Kurds and Arabs, successfully hides that he's Jewish and becomes a gangbanger, till his gift for being noticed makes that no longer possible. Based on a bestselling autobiography. The film makes some too-sudden leaps but the young actors are engaging, especially the star, Doğuhan Kabadayı.

[Chris Knipp]

AFRICA (Oren Gerner 2019)

Israeli independent filmmaker Oren Gerner, in his first feature length film, has enlisted his father to play a version of himself surrounded by his mother, grandkids, neighbors and villagers doing likewise. The focus is on Meir, the father's, difficulties adjusting to being in retirement after an active life. Everyone is vry cooperative. Gerner is perhaps a little too manipulative. But this seems like a very dangerous way to work.

[Chris Knipp]

200 Meters ٢٠٠ متر (Ameen Nayfeh 2020)

Vividly dramatizes the daily ordeals the Israeli apartheid system puts Palestinians through. With the great Ali Suliman.

[Chris Knipp]

KINGS OF CAPITOL HILL/HALOBBY (Mor Loushy 2020)

Using a group of distinctly disaffected former members and others, this documentary seeks to describe the history and present condition of AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington and how it has become increasingly large, rich, partisan, and right-wing, and how organized opposition (J Street, et al.) has grown up of late. Loushy has made other docs. I reviewed her CENSORED VOICES, a remix of clips from right after the 1967 war.

[Chris Knipp]

BLUE BOX (Michal Weits 2021)

Her great grandfather was a founding father of the State of Israel who came in 1908 and worked acquiring land. She explores his monumental 5,000-page journal and unearths the dark side of her ancestor and the country's founding and continued existence. Interviews with relatives, voiceover of the journal recounting Israeli history, and fluent use of archival footage - familiar documentary ingredients - form a remarkable film that as a Haaretz piece put it, "Looks the nakba* deep in the eye." (*The "tragedy" of Palestinian dispossession.)

[Chris Knipp]

NOT GOING QUIETLY (Nicholas Bruckman 2021)

A documentary about American political activist Adi Barkan. In 2018 at age 32 with a wife who teaches at UCSB and a toddler son, he is diagnosed with ALS, and he goes on working, becoming more visible and effective as he co-founds the Be a Hero PAC and campaigns for universal health care. Awesome, inspiring, sometimes hard to watch.