Have you gone back to the cinema yet? Though life has pretty much gone back to normal post-pandemic, a night out at the movies could be a step too far for many.

But the brains behind the UK Jewish Film Festival hope to change all that with a programme hand-picked to tempt us back to the big screen. Screenings are taking place November from 10 to 20, but there is an online offering too.

Here’s my pick of the programme — details of these and much more at ukjewishfilm.org/festival/uk-jewish-film-festival-2022/

Karaoke
Moshe Rosenthal’s fantastic offbeat comedy is the festival’s opener. It tells the story of Meir and Tova, whose comfy, passionless lives are shaken up by a flashy new neighbour who loves hosting karaoke parties in his penthouse.

Karaoke

The neighbour is played by Lior Ashkenazi, whose directorial debut is also part of the festival — see below.

Three Minutes: A lengthening
This extraordinary documentary will be followed by a Q&A with the film’s narrator Helena Bonham Carter.

Composed around a three-minute fragment of film from 1938, uncovered and restored, this essay film captures the excitement of the people of the small Polish town of Nasielsk before the war which would wipe most of them out.

Where Life begins
French actor Stéphane Freiss’s directorial debut. Set on a farm in southern Italy, the film follows owner Elio (Riccardo Scamarcio) as he hosts a French strictly Orthodox family performing their annual task of harvesting etrogim.

Where Life Begins

“It’s a film, above all, on freedom, and our capacity to liberate ourselves from [in this case] the weight of this very heavy Jewish Orthodox legacy,” Freiss told the JC.

Perfect strangers

Perfect Strangers (UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2022) credit David Scurry

A scene from Perfect Strangers

Israeli actor Lior Ashkenazi’s directorial debut is a remake of a 2016 Italian film about a dinner party drama. “It’s about a group of old friends who grew up together but, eventually, have gone their separate ways and so between them have little in common,” he told the JC.

Back to Berlin

Berlin 2

Back to Berlin

Film-maker Bobby Lax, who is from Britain but lives in Israel, goes to Germany to explore his family’s secrets accompanied by an old friend from his school days, Manuel, who also has discoveries to make about his German family’s history in the war. “I was absolutely full of fear and anxiety,” Lax told the JC.

“I don’t think anything could have really prepared me adequately for how I would feel.”

June Zero
American film-maker Jake Paltrow’s take on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, seen through the eyes of ordinary Israelis.
Paltrow told the JC that the film was his way of “articulating thoughts that we haven’t fully completed but that we feel and talk about.”

Charlotte

Charlotte 1

A scene from Charlotte

This animated film tells the true story of the life of the French artist Charlotte Salomon, who fled the Nazis to the South of France where she painted a remarkable series telling her life story. She died in Auschwitz, aged just 26 and pregnant.

Shttl

Shttl (UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2022)(02)

A scene from Shttl

An extraordinary feature film that tells the story of life in a Ukrainian shtetl on the eve of the Nazi occupation, and was made in Ukraine just before the Russian invasion.
Director Ady Walter will be interviewed in next week’s JC.

1341 Frames of love and war
This documentary focuses on Israel’s leading photo-journalist Micha Bar-Am.
As featured in the JC’s RH magazine, the film uses Bar-Am’s work — often undertaken in war zones — to tell the story of the man, his family and his nation.