True life takes over in this year’s Jewish Film Festival (JFF), with five films based on real stories and only three films in the fiction genre.
Also unusual is the fact that no selection is set during the Holocaust—there’s a dearth of Nazis this year—maybe one—maybe. Instead, the fictional stories, two comedies and one drama, focus on survivors of the Holocaust and their mechanisms for carrying on in the face of such devastating loss. How the JFF program shook out this way is anyone’s guess, but no matter. The JFF has selected eight award winning movies, most of them very current, guaranteed to please audiences.
Last week’s column previewed four non-fiction works. The powerful Israeli film “Incitement” is the fifth, and it’s gripping. “Incitement” traces the extreme right-wing Israeli lone assassin, Yigal Amir, during the two years leading up to his assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister. Amir, who starts out without much political bent, is slowly influenced by extreme right-wingers who don’t want to give an inch in the name of peace. One can draw a straight line from the assassination of Rabin to the rise of Benjamin Netanyahu and his embrace of Israel’s right factions—and from there, a link to the current state of play in Israeli today.
Please login or subscribe to view the complete article.