Four fab film fest flicks

By Lauren Krotosky - Thursday 29th 2009f October 2009


Lauren Krotosky explores the highlights at this year's UK Jewish Film Festival

Adam Resurrected

Featuring a remarkable international cast peppered with star cameos, Adam Resurrected is essential viewing for 2009. US auteur Paul Schrader (American Gigolo, The Walker) proves a suitably imaginative choice to direct this big-screen version of Yoram Kaniuk's 1969 novel Adam Ben Kelev, a dazzlingly original account of Holocaust survival. Jeff Goldblum is a revelation as Adam Stein, a charismatic Berlin circus impresario who survives the camps by acting as pet 'dog' to SS Commandant Klein (Willem Dafoe). By 1961 Adam rules the roost as a patient at a stark psychiatric institute in the Negev Desert, run by Dr. Gross (Sir Derek Jacobi) and the sternly seductive Nurse Gina (Ayelet Zurer). But a strange new arrival re-awakens Adam's guilt at his family's fate. Schrader and screenwriter Noah Stollman's blackly comic vision scatters Adam's purgatorial present with atmospheric music-hall flashbacks and glimpses of his post-war life in Haifa and Tel Aviv, creating an inimitable portrait of rebellion and survival.

Tuesday 10 November at 8pm at Tricycle

The Barmitzvah Boy

With the UKJFF reaching its 13th year, how could it resist the chance to screen Jack Rosenthal's sublime BAFTA-winner The Barmitzvah Boy. First broadcast in the BBC's landmark Play for Today slot, this feature-length comedy-drama was taken to the nation's heart more than any other screen portrait of Jewish life before or since (much to Rosenthal's surprise). Eliot Green (Jeremy Steyn) finds himself caught up in a whirlwind of caterers, guest lists, hairdressers and Torah study as Maria Charles' endearingly fussy matriarch Rita prepares him for the most important day of his life (no pressure!). Exhausted dad Victor (Bernard Spear) and elder sister Lesley (Adrienne Posta) take a more serene approach, but Eliot's about to experience an acute case of cold feet. Affectionately satirising the rituals of Jewish community and debunking the myth of adulthood, Rosenthal's witty time capsule of 1970s Britain is still irresistible three decades on.

Sunday 8 November at 2.30pm at Odeon Swiss Cottage

Jaffa

What if Romeo and Juliet were alive today and living in Jaffa? Mali, a young Jewish woman, has a secret relationship with Toufik, the Arab mechanic who works in her father's garage. When they discover that she is expecting a child, they decide to run away together. However, tensions mount between Toufik and Mali's racist brother and the ensuing confrontation changes the young lovers' destinies forever. Inspired by classic Egyptian melodrama with all its intense emotion and pathos Jaffa is sensitively directed by Keren Yedaya, whose 2004 film Or won five awards at the Cannes Film Festival including the Critics Week Grand Prix and Camera d'Or. Jaffa also features a stellar cast led by the outstanding Ronit Elkabetz (Late Marriage, Or, The Band's Visit) as the indulged and beautiful mother - a pivotal figure in the unfolding drama with her highly charged emotional fragility; Moni Moshonov (Late Marriage, Two Lovers) and rising star Dana Ivgy (Or, The Secrets). A star-studded cast who bring the characters passionately to life.

Saturday 14 November at 7.15pm at Tricycle

Oh My God

We are experiencing days of religious turmoil, of fundamentalism and the breakdown of spirituality through technology and reason. After the collapse of the piety that was rooted in myth, cult, occult, and ancient religions, Peter Rogers asks, "What is God?" Over three years the director travelled across 23 countries asking this question to children, religious leaders, celebrities, fanatics, and to the common man. The results of this journey are sometimes predictable, sometimes surprising. We are conditioned as human beings - influenced by our parents, schools, and the religious beliefs of our home countries. If we have a religion, perhaps we should spend longer studying our chosen belief instead of blindly following other human beings who claim to have the authority of God. It seems evident that Man has taken the power and concept of God and politicised it for agendas that are the antipathies to the dignity and tolerance that the prophets of all the major religions preached in their day.

Sunday 8 November at 4pm at Tricycle

The UK Jewish Film Festival runs from 7 to 19 November. For more info, log onto ukjewishfilmfestival.org.uk