Individual film tickets are $12 each.
Festival passes are $120 for all 11 screenings,
$80 for 8 screenings and $40 for 4 screenings.
Tickets are FREE for UF students with valid ID. Students wishing to reserve tickets, should call (352) 371-3846.
Note that some films owing to licensing issues are blocked for patrons outside the Gainesville viewing area. We apologize for any inconvenience.
The Tenth Annual Gainesville Jewish Film Festival is made possible by:
The Alexander Grass Chair in Jewish History, the Bud Shorstein Professorship in American Jewish Culture & Society, the Friends of Jewish Studies Tree of Life Fund, the Gary R. Gerson Annual Lecture Series, the Harry Rich Endowment for Holocaust Studies, the Mikki and Morris Futernick Visiting Professorship, the Norman and Irma Braman Chair in Holocaust Studies, the University of Florida Center for European Studies, the University of Florida African American Studies Program, the University of Florida Department of Political Science, the University of Florida Program in French and Francophone Studies.
Golda
Sunday, November 29 at 7 pm
2019 / Documentary / 88 min / Israel / Hebrew & English
Director: Sagi Bornstein, Udi Nir, & Shani Rozanes
Shortly before her passing, Golda Meir was interviewed for Israeli television. After shooting ended, the cameras kept rolling, recording an intimate talk with the first and only woman to ever rule Israel. As she lit one cigarette after the other, Golda spoke freely, pleading her case for her term as Prime Minister – five turbulent years that secured her place in history, albeit at a high personal cost. Based on these never-before seen materials, testimonies of supporters and opponents and rare archival footage, GOLDA tells the story of Meir’s dramatic premiership – from her surprising rise to power and iconic international stature as “queen of the Jewish people,” to her tragic and lonely demise.
Breaking Bread
Monday, November 30 at 7 pm
2019 / Documentary / 85 min / United States / English
Director: Beth Elise Hawk
Founded by Dr. Nof Atamna-Ismaeel—the first Muslim Arab to win Israel’s MasterChef—the A-sham Arabic Food Festival is creating social change through food. At the Festival, Arab and Jewish Israeli chefs collaborate on delectable dishes, working together to transform traditional recipes. Celebrating their unique cultural heritages and their common love of food, the chefs prove that there is no space for religion and politics in the kitchen.
Who Will Write Our History?
Tuesday, December 1 at 7 pm
2018 / documentary / 95 min / Unites States / English, Yiddish, & Polish
Director: Roberta Grossman
Who Will Write Our History tells the story of Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oyneg Shabes Archive, the secret archive he created and led in the Warsaw Ghetto. With 30,000 pages of writing, photographs, posters, and more, the Oyneg Shabes Archive is the most important cache of in-the-moment, eyewitness accounts from the Holocaust. It documents not only how the Jews of the ghetto died, but how they lived. The film is based on the book of the same name by historian Samuel Kassow.
Muna Episodes
Wednesday, December 2 at 7 pm
2018 / TV show / 90 min / Israel / Arabic & Hebrew
Director: Ori Sivan
Israeli summer of 2014 – Muna Abud, a successful female Israeli-Arab photographer who lives and works in Tel Aviv, is putting together an exhibition of her work portraying strong, groundbreaking Arab women. The exhibition will take place in Paris and be sponsored by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On one hand, her Arab critics argue that this exhibition is an attempt to cover-up for the discriminating Israeli establishment. On the other hand, her Jewish critics refuse to accept her as their representative and some of her exhibition’s heroines decide to pull out of the project. Muna is a strong woman; but simultaneously, her brand new and complicated romantic relationship with Yaniv, a Jewish news producer, is being put to the test ever so intensely against her family and the village she grew up in.
Incitement
Thursday, December 3 at 7 pm
2019 / Thriller / 123 min / Israel / Hebrew
Director: Yaron Zilberman
A psychological thriller, Incitement follows the year leading to the assassination of Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, from the point of view of the assassin. The film details, for the first time, the forces that act upon the assassin, including the religious and political incitement, the personal and the interpersonal turmoil. It is a psychological portrait of a political assassin seeking to kill democracy. It is also a portrait of a torn society on the brink of civil war.
My Polish Honeymoon
Saturday, December 5 at 8:30 pm
2018 / Comedy / 88 min / France / French
Director: Ronit Kertsner
Anna and Adam, a young Parisian couple with Jewish origins, are about to travel to Poland for the first time. They are just married, and technically speaking, this will be their honeymoon. They will attend a ceremony in memory of the Jewish community in the village of Adam’s grandfather, which was destroyed 75 years ago. Adam is not really enthusiastic, but sees it as an occasion to spend some quality time with his wife, away from their baby boy. Anna, on the other hand, is both extremely anxious and overly excited about the trip to her grandmother’s country. She is hoping to reconnect with her roots and finally discover more about her own family’s history, which was always a mystery…
The Rabbi Goes West
Sunday, December 6 at 3 pm
2019 / Documentary / 73 min / United States / English
Director: Amy Geller & Gerald Peary
A feature-length documentary about a charismatic Hasidic Chabad rabbi who moved from Brooklyn, NY to Bozeman, Montana, bringing his Chabad brand of missionary Judaism to the American west. There he runs into resistance from other rabbis, Reform and Conservative, and also Neo-Nazis threatening the Montana Jewish community.
My War Hero Uncle
Sunday, December 6 at 7 pm
2018 / Documentary / 52 min / Israel / Hebrew
Director: Shaked Goren
“I decided to start sending letters – until my long-awaited release.” Ami wrote these words at the age of 18, before he was killed in the 1967 War. Through stories, Memorial Day ceremonies, and his letters, Ami was always a present absence for his nephew Shaked, the film’s director. Following his grandmother’s declining health, Shaked applies to the Defense Ministry for nursing care. His claim is rejected. Their refusal leaves him confused. Fifty years after Ami’s death, a shocking truth is unveiled.
Those Who Remained
Monday, December 7 at 7 pm
2019 / Drama / 83 min / Hungary / Hungarian
Director: Barnabás Tóth
Having survived the camps, 42-year old Aldo lives a solitary life as a doctor in Budapest. 16-year old Klara lives reluctantly with her great-aunt, holding on to hope that her father and mother will return. She meets Aldo, and soon the two of them find something in each other that has long been absent in their lives.
Svetlana Boym: Exile and Imagination
Tuesday, December 8 at 7 pm
2017 / Documentary / 60 min / United States / English
Director: Judith Wechsler
This one hour documentary film is about the life and work of Svetlana Boym, literary and cultural critic, media artist, novelist and playwright. In 1980, age 21, Svetlana left the USSR for the US, unable to pursue studies at the Leningrad university because of the Jewish quota. After graduate studies at Boston University and Harvard, she became the Carl Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard.
Aulcie
Wednesday, December 9 at 7 pm
2020 / Documentary / 75 min / United States & Israel / English & Hebrew
Director: Dani Menkin
Aulcie tells the inspiring story of Aulcie Perry, a basketball legend who led Maccabi Tel Aviv to an upset win in the European Championship. During the summer of 1976, Aulcie Perry was spotted by a scout for Maccabi Tel Aviv while playing at the Rucker courts in Harlem and was quickly signed to play for their fledgling team. The Israeli players immediately responded to Aulcie’s leadership and that year they had what one Sports Illustrated writer described as “the most extraordinary season in its remarkable history” and what Perry later called “the best nine months of my life.” In 1977, Perry helped the team to its first European Championship, a prize they took four years later again under his leadership. After the season, to the surprise of many, Aulcie Perry converted to Judaism, adopted the Hebrew name Elisha Ben Avraham, and became an Israeli citizen. This inspiring film tells the story of this remarkable athlete who captured the spirit of a nation, triumphant and victorious against all odds, and put Israel on the map.