The Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center Announce the 29th Annual New York Jewish Film Festival January 15–28, 2020

NEW YORK, NY (December 9, 2019) – The Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center will present the 29th annual New York Jewish Film Festival (NYJFF), January 15–28, 2020. Among the oldest and most influential Jewish film festivals worldwide, NYJFF each year presents the finest documentary, narrative, and short films from around the world that explore the Jewish experience. Featuring new work by dynamic voices in international cinema as well as film revivals, the festival’s 2020 lineup includes 30 wide-ranging and exciting features and shorts from the iconic to the iconoclastic, many of which will be screening in their world, U.S., and New York premieres. Screenings are held at the Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street.

Dani Menkin’s documentary Aulcie is the Opening Night selection, screening in its New York premiere on Thursday, January 16. When a scout for the Israeli basketball team Maccabi Tel Aviv spotted Aulcie Perry on Harlem’s Rucker Court in 1976, he recruited the athlete to join their fledgling team. Less than a year later, Perry led the team to a win in the 1977 European Championship, a victory that he repeated four years later. Aulcie delves into the riveting story of this legendary player, who put Israeli basketball on the map, converted to Judaism, became an Israeli citizen, and overcame his demons.

The Closing Night film is the New York premiere of Dror Zahavi’s Crescendo. When a world-famous conductor (played by Toni Erdmann’s Peter Simonischek) accepts the job to create an Israeli-Palestinian youth orchestra, he steps into a firestorm of conflict and mistrust as he tries to bring the two factions of young musicians together in harmony.

The Centerpiece selection focuses on the career of Marceline Loridan-Ivens, the French film director, author, producer, and actress who died in 2018. The Birch Tree Meadow (2003), starring Anouk Aimée and August Diehl, is Loridan-Ivens’s autobiographical drama about an Auschwitz survivor who returns to the camp to confront her past and the young descendant of an SS guard she meets there. This screening is part of an annual initiative highlighting work by women filmmakers that merit broader American recognition.

The 2020 NYJFF marks the 50th anniversary of legendary director Vittorio De Sica’s Academy Award–winning The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. This beloved Italian drama, based on the classic novel by Giorgio Bassani, is set amidst the rise of Fascism in the 1930s. The wealthy, intellectual Finzi-Contini family’s estate serves as a gathering place for the local Jewish community that tries to remain sheltered from the country’s growing anti-Semitism. While romance unfolds behind the tall, stone walls of the garden, an increasingly hostile reality sets in.

The NYJFF will present the World Premiere of the new 35mm restoration of Charles Davenport’s long-lost 1919 silent film Broken Barriers,the first film based on the Sholem Aleichem stories that inspired Fiddler on the Roof. This story is uniquely told from the perspective of Khavah, Tevye the milkman’s daughter, who falls in love with the gentile boy Fedka and navigates the reverberations from her community and family. Donald Sosin will provide live piano accompaniment.

Two documentaries receive their world premieres:

Julia Mintz’s Four Winters: A Story of Jewish Partisan Resistance and Bravery in WWII tells the inspiring story of Jewish partisans who took up arms against Hitler's war machine through interviews with the last living partisans.

Brad Rothschild’s They Ain’t Ready for Me focuses on Tamar Manasseh, an African-American rabbinical student who is combating gun violence on the South Side of Chicago with magnetic, self-assured energy through her organization MASK (Mothers Against Senseless Killing).

Other fiction works of note include:

Laurent Heynemann’s An Irrepressible Woman, starring Elsa Zylberstein and Hippolyte Girardot, is a touching drama of former French Prime Minister Leon Blum, imprisoned at Buchenwald in 1940, and Jeanne Reichenbach, who loved him since they were teenagers and risks everything to reunite with him at the concentration camp (New York Premiere).

Yaron Zilberman’s Incitement, Israel’s submission for the 2020 Academy Awards, following the radicalization of Yigal Amir in the year leading up to his assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (New York Premiere). Writer/director Yaron Zilberman will present a master class in screenwriting and directing on January 19.

Isaac Cherem’s Leona, about a young Jewish woman in Mexico City who struggles to do the right thing as she navigates a forbidden love.

Barnabas Toth’s Those Who Remained, Hungary’s submission for the 2020 Academy Awards, which focuses on a 42-year-old Holocaust survivor in Budapest who meets a teenage girl and forms a father-daughter connection that helps them both heal (New York Premiere).

Caroline Link’s When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit,

This year’s festival features an array of enlightening and gripping documentaries. Highlights include:

Cordelia Dvorak’s Marceline. A Woman. A Century, a moving portrait of the effervescent and iconoclastic French director, author, producer, and actress Marceline Loridan-Ivens (New York Premiere).

Rachel Rusinek and Eyal Ben Moshe’s I Was Not Born a Mistake, the story of Yiscah Smith, who lived as an ultra-orthodox married man with six children and deep ties in the Hasidic community before abruptly leaving Israel, only to return 20 years later as a trans woman (U.S. Premiere).

Dalit Kimor’s Mrs. G, a portrait of the Gottex swimwear empire and its larger-than-life founder, Lea Gottlieb, legendary designer and Holocaust survivor (New York Premiere).

Several short films, including a Shorts Program comprised entirely of films directed by women, will be included this year:

Nili Tal’s documentary Gurit Kadman, portraying the influential dancer and choreographer Gurit Kadman, who helped found the Dalia Folk Dance Festival in Israel, and was instrumental in recording and nurturing dance traditions from both the nascent country and the traditions of Israel’s immigrants (U.S. Premiere).

Danielle Durchslag’s experimental Eleanor of Illinois, starring four-time Tony award nominee Judy Kuhn, who embodies Katharine Hepburn’s Eleanor of Aquitaine from The Lion in Winter but as a contemporary Jewish mother. (U.S. Premiere).

Oran Zegman’s Marriage Material, a darkly comic musical where a young woman enrolls in a retreat designed to transform her into “marriage material” after her boyfriend rejects her proposal. (New York Premiere).

TICKETS
NYJFF tickets will go on sale to Film at Lincoln Center and Jewish Museum members on Monday, December 16 at noon, and to the public on Thursday, December 19. Tickets may be purchased online or in person at FLC’s Walter Reade Theater and Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center box offices, 165 & 144 West 65th Street. For complete festival information, visit NYJFF.org.

This year’s New York Jewish Film Festival was selected by Rachel Chanoff, Director, THE OFFICE performing arts + film; Gabriel Grossman, Coordinator, New York Jewish Film Festival/The Jewish Museum; and Aviva Weintraub, Associate Curator, The Jewish Museum and Director, New York Jewish Film Festival; with Dennis Lim, Director of Programming, Film at Lincoln Center, as adviser.

SUPPORT
The New York Jewish Film Festival is made possible by the Martin and Doris Payson Fund for Film and Media.

Generous support is also provided by Wendy Fisher and Dennis Goodman, Sara and Axel Schupf, Louise and Frank Ring, The Liman Foundation, Mimi and Barry Alperin, an anonymous gift, the Ike, Molly and Steven Elias Foundation, Amy and Howard Rubenstein, Robin and Danny Greenspun, Steven and Sheira Schacter, and through public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with City Council.

Additional support is provided by the Polish Cultural Institute New York, Dutch Culture USA, the German Consulate General New York, and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.

Film at Lincoln Center receives additional support for the New York Jewish Film Festival from The Jack & Pearl Resnick Foundation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Joan Dupont, film critic; Nicola Galliner, Jewish Film Festival Berlin & Brandenburg; Stuart Hands, Toronto Jewish Film Festival; Annette Insdorf, Columbia University; Marlene Josephs, Volunteer; Linda Lipson, Volunteer; Richard Peña, Columbia University;  Sophie Rupp, intern.

FILM DESCRIPTIONS & SCHEDULE
All films screen digitally at the Walter Reade Theater (165 West 65th St.) unless otherwise noted

Opening Night
Aulcie
Dani Menkin, Israel, 2019, 72m
English and Hebrew with English subtitles
New York Premiere
In 1976, Aulcie Perry was playing basketball in Harlem when scouts from Maccabi Tel Aviv spotted and signed him. A year later, he led the team to their first European Championship, converted to Judaism, and become an Israeli citizen. His rise to fame was precipitous, and his relationship with supermodel Tami Ben Ami became the subject of relentless media attention, solidifying his status as one of Israel’s biggest stars. But behind the scenes, he had a growing drug addiction that culminated in his arrest and imprisonment, and since his release he has committed himself to uplifting those suffering from drug abuse and addiction. Dani Menken’s documentary tells the story of this legendary athlete.
Thursday, January 16, 8:30pm
Subject Aulcie Perry, director Dani Menkin, and producer Nancy Spielberg in person

Centerpiece
The Birch Tree Meadow
Marceline Loridan-Ivens, France/Germany/Poland, 2003, 91m
English, French, and Polish with English subtitles
Anouk Aimée and August Diehl star in this astounding autobiographical drama by Marceline Loridan-Ivens, a French filmmaker and memoirist who passed away in 2018. Aimée plays Myriam, a filmmaker and Holocaust survivor who has lived in New York for years. When she returns to Europe for a reunion of fellow survivors, she confronts her past and visits Auschwitz, the scene of her “murdered adolescence.” There, she meets Diehl’s Oskar, a young photographer coming to grips with his grandfather’s role in the SS. This extraordinary film, which screened in the 2004 NYJFF, is a profoundly moving reflection on memory from a true iconoclast of French cinema.
Wednesday, January 22, 1:15pm & 8:15pm
8:15pm screening introduced by Richard Peña, Professor of Professional Practice in Film, Columbia University

Closing Night
Crescendo
Dror Zahavi, Germany, 2019, 106m
English and German with English subtitles
New York Premiere
When world-famous conductor Eduard Sporck (played by Toni Erdmann’s Peter Simonischek) accepts a job to help establish an Israeli-Palestinian youth orchestra, he steps into a firestorm of discord and mistrust. The two factions of young musicians have grown up in a state of conflict, with fear governing their perceptions of each other. With only three weeks of rehearsal, Sporck's essential task becomes more interpersonal than musical: can the children of conflict come together in harmony? Director Dror Zahavi brings us a gripping, clear-eyed drama imbued with hope for understanding, humanity, and peace.
Tuesday, January 28, 3:15pm & 8:30pm
Producer Alice Brauner and co-producer Michael Zechbauer in person


MAIN SLATE FILMS

The Day After I’m Gone
Nimrod Eldar, Israel, 2018, 95m
Hebrew with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Yoram is a veterinarian in Tel Aviv. When his adolescent daughter Roni attempts suicide, his cloistered world is shaken to its core. To rediscover her happiness and expand their worldview, they travel together to visit her mother’s family along the banks of the Dead Sea, beginning a journey of mutual discovery that helps clarify the source of his daughter’s depression and his latent feelings of hopelessness. Director Nimrod Eldar writes of this graceful and tender film, “I tried to write a film that is not driven by narrative provocations of any kind—a film where everyone is ‘good.’”
Monday, January 20, 9:15pm
Sunday, January 26, 1:00pm

Dolce Fine Giornata
Jacek Borcuch, Poland, 2018, 96m
Italian, Polish, and French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
A freethinking Polish Jewish Nobel Prize–winning poet living in the Tuscan countryside grows fond of a younger immigrant, which gradually begins to fracture her relationships with her husband and daughter. After a terrorist attack in Rome leads to anti-immigrant hysteria, she boldly speaks out against the European perspective, and her comments wreak unexpected havoc for her, for the immigrant, and for her family. Dolce Fine Giornata peers into the lives and attitudes of small-town Italy, from the perspective of an uncompromising and brilliant woman who consistently stands for what she values most.
Monday, January 27, 12:45pm & 6:00pm

Four Winters: A Story of Jewish Partisan Resistance and Bravery in WWII
Julia Mintz, USA, 2019, 90m
World Premiere
This essential documentary tells the stories of the Jewish partisans who took up arms against Hitler’s war machine. Despite extraordinary odds, over 25,000 Jews fought the Nazis and their collaborators from deep within the forests of Eastern Europe. These determined men and women, many barely in their teens, engaged in acts of sabotage, blowing up trains, burning electric stations, and attacking armed enemy headquarters. The last surviving partisans tell their stories to director Julia Mintz, who shines a spotlight on their bravery through interviews, archival footage, and historic war records. Four Winters is a stunning, heartfelt narrative of heroism and resilience.
Thursday, January 16, 6:00pm
Sunday, January 19, 2:45pm
Director Julia Mintz in person

50th Anniversary Presentation
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
Vittorio De Sica, Italy/Germany, 1970, 94m
Italian with English subtitles
Presented for its 50th anniversary, this beloved Italian drama based on the classic novel by Giorgio Bassani is set amid the rise of Fascism in the 1930s. The wealthy, intellectual Finzi-Contini family’s estate serves as a gathering place for the local Jewish community, as they try to take shelter from growing anti-Semitism. Ordinary tennis clubs become off-limits to Italian Jews, but such policies are unenforceable behind the tall, stone walls of the garden. While romance unfolds, the increasingly hostile reality sets in. This beautiful film from legendary director Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thieves; Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow) won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Sunday, January 26, 3:15pm
Monday, January 27, 8:30pm

God of the Piano
Itay Tal, Israel, 2018, 79m
Hebrew with English subtitles
New York Premiere
A Greek tragedy set in contemporary Israel, God of the Piano is the story of a concert pianist from a respected musical family who has never been able to live up to her father's stratospheric expectations. When she becomes pregnant, she transfers her hope of being a musical prodigy onto her child. She is devastated when her son is born deaf, but she doubles down on her dream, obsessively grooming him for stardom. This beautifully composed film has the pacing of a thriller.
Wednesday, January 22, 3:30pm
Saturday, January 25, 7:00pm

An Impossible Love
Catherine Corsini, France/Belgium, 2018, 130m
French with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Rachel, a young office clerk, meets Philippe, a charismatic man from a bourgeois family, and she gives birth to a daughter amid their whirlwind romance. But Philippe proves to be an insufferable narcissist, disappearing and reappearing as a toxic presence in the lives of both Rachel and her daughter Chantal. Over the next 50 years, Rachel and Chantal attempt to preserve an unconditional love for each other despite the absent and abusive father. Hailed as a “brilliantly dark and tender family drama” by The Guardian, An Impossible Love meditates on all forms of love—familial, romantic, functional—and their messy intersections.
Saturday, January 25, 9:00pm
Monday, January 27, 3:15pm

Incitement
Yaron Zilberman, Israel, 2019, 122m
Hebrew with English subtitles
New York Premiere
This acclaimed historical drama follows the disturbing radicalization of Israeli ultranationalist Yigal Amir in the year leading up to his assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. A law student and Orthodox Jew outraged by Rabin’s announcement of the Oslo Accords, which aspired to achieve a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, Amir turns to violent extremism and begins to recruit fighters and gather weapons. As he becomes fixated on his righteousness and his justification of the assassination, his mental health continues to decline. Israel’s submission for the 2020 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
Sunday, January 19, 5:30pm
Monday, January 20, 12:30pm
Director Yaron Zilberman and producer Tamar Sela in person

An Irrepressible Woman
Laurent Heynemann, France, 2019, 103m
French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
The year is 1940, and French-Jewish socialist politician and three-time Prime Minister Leon Blum has been imprisoned at Buchenwald. This touching historical drama starring Elsa Zylberstein and Hippolyte Girardot follows Jeanne Reichenbach, who has been in love with Blum since they were teenagers but has always only admired him from afar. Now she is married with a son, but she is driven by the urge to link her fate with Blum’s once and for all—as the Nazis invade France, she abandons her comfortable life and risks everything to reunite with and marry him in prison.
Thursday, January 16, 3:30pm
Saturday, January 18, 9:15pm

I Was Not Born a Mistake
Rachel Rusinek & Eyal Ben Moshe, Israel, 2019, 52m
English and Hebrew with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
This beautiful documentary tells the true story of Yiscah Smith, who was living as an ultra-orthodox married man with six children and deep ties in the community before coming out as a gay man and leaving Israel. In the United States, Smith underwent a gender transition and took her current name. Twenty years after leaving home, she returned to Israel to be close to her family and her heritage, becoming a religious educator and spiritual mentor. I Was Not Born a Mistake alternates between past and present, where she helps clients on their own paths of awareness and self-discovery.
Preceded by
Butterflies in Berlin: Diary of a Soul Split in Two
Monica Manganelli, Germany/Italy, 2018, 29m
New York Premiere
This sumptuous animated short tells the story of one of the world’s first post-op transgender women in Weimar-era Berlin. As discrimination rises against “deviance” of all kinds, can she stay true to her identity?
Tuesday, January 21, 3:30pm & 8:30pm
Directors Eyal Ben Moshe & Rachel Rusinek in person

Leona
Isaac Cherem, Mexico, 2018, 95m
Spanish with English subtitles
New York City Premiere
A young woman in Mexico City ekes out a living as a muralist while living with her more conservative mother. She feels pressure from all sides to find the right man to settle down with—after all, her grandmother was a bride by 15 and a mother of three by 18. But when she falls in love with a gentile man, she struggles to do the right thing as she navigates the age-old conflicts that interfaith relationships can provoke. Leona is a heartfelt, dramatic, and contemporary take on a timeless love story.
Wednesday, January 15, 3:15pm
Saturday, January 18, 7:00pm

Ma’abarot: The Israeli Transit Camps
Dina Zvi Riklis, Israel, 2019, 84m
Hebrew with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
The transit camps of 1948–1952 were a temporary housing solution to accommodate Israel’s surge of immigrants following World War II. Over 300,000 immigrants lived in tents and tin huts in this controversial initiative, contributing to the divide between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews in Israel. The impact of the camps on the lives of immigrants resonates into contemporary Israeli culture, but has largely been forgotten in the public consciousness. Ma'abarot takes a close look at life inside the camps through interviews with former residents, research, and archival footage, shattering misconceptions and offering stark insights into the racial divides that still permeate Israeli society.
Sunday, January 26, 5:30pm
Director Dina Zvi Riklis and producer Arik Bernstein in person

Marceline. A Woman. A Century
Cordelia Dvorak, France/Netherlands, 2018, 76m
French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
The effervescent and brilliant French director, author, producer, and actress Marceline Loridan-Ivens dazzles in this vibrant documentary tribute to a radical chronicler, Holocaust survivor, and loving partner. Marceline was a key figure, with Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, in the French avant-garde film movement in the 1950s. She later worked alongside her husband, Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens, as they traveled to capture the sights and sounds of the independence struggle in Vietnam, and the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution in China. Loridan-Ivens’s autobiographical feature The Birch Tree Meadow is being screened before this film.
Wednesday, January 22, 6:00pm

Mrs. G
Dalit Kimor, Israel, 2019, 55m
English, Hebrew, and Hungarian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
The Gottex swimwear empire was founded by legendary designer, Holocaust survivor, and larger-than-life character Lea Gottlieb. She started the company in her tiny Tel Aviv apartment, and navigated her way to the top of the fashion world. She spent her fortune extravagantly and lived her life like there was no tomorrow—often at the expense of those closest to her. This inspiring documentary examines her meteoric rise, her unyielding professional vision, and her complicated relationship with her daughters.
Preceded by
Gurit Kadman
Nili Tal, Israel, 1981/2020, 34m
Hebrew with English subtitles
U.S.  Premiere
This delightful documentary profiles the influential dancer and choreographer Gurit Kadman, who helped found the Dalia Folk Dance Festival in Israel, and was instrumental in recording and nurturing dance traditions from both the nascent country and the traditions of Israel’s immigrants.
Thursday, January 16, 1:00pm
Monday, January 20, 6:45pm
Director Cordelia Dvorak in person

My Polish Honeymoon
Elise Otzenberger, France, 2019, 88m
French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
When French newlyweds Adam and Anna take their honeymoon in Poland, the home of their Jewish grandparents, excitement about discovering their families’ histories begins to morph into anxiety. As the trip unfolds and they attend a ceremony commemorating the Jewish community in Adam’s grandfather’s village, which was destroyed 75 years ago, anxiety gives way to culture clash in this deliciously dark romantic comedy.
Tuesday, January 21, 1:00pm & 6:00pm
Director Elise Otzenberger in person

Picture of His Life
Yonatan Nir & Dani Menkin, USA/Israel/Canada, 2019, 71m
English, Hebrew, and Inuit with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Yom Kippur War veteran Amos Nachoum is one of the greatest underwater photographers of all time, and has a special affinity for apex predators—he has captured great white sharks, giant crocodiles, anacondas, and killer whales in breathtaking close-up. One fearsome animal has continued to elude him: the polar bear. Picture of His Life is an astonishing portrayal of Nachoum's quest to safely swim alongside the formidable bear, photograph it underwater, and, in the process, find some semblance of inner peace in a life marked by trauma.
Wednesday, January 15, 1:00pm
Sunday, January 19, 8:30pm
Co-director Dani Menkin and producer Nancy Spielberg in person on January 15

The State Against Mandela and the Others
Nicolas Champeaux & Gilles Porte, France, 2018, 106m
New York Premiere
This synthesis of archival footage, animation, and interviews chronicles the trial of Nelson Mandela and his nine other co-defendants after which they were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. There were no cameras in court, but this rousing documentary puts 256 hours of newly discovered audio to brilliant use. While Mandela captivated the world during the historic trial, each of his co-defendants endured the same withering cross-examinations, and each held fast to the moral high ground and played a crucial role in planting the seeds that would bloom decades later into the fall of apartheid.
Tuesday, January 28, 1:00pm & 6:15pm

They Ain’t Ready for Me
Brad Rothschild, USA, 2019, 89m
World Premiere
This moving and timely documentary tells the story of Tamar Manasseh, an African-American rabbinical student who is combating gun violence on the South Side of Chicago with magnetic, self-assured energy through her organization MASK, or Mothers Against Senseless Killings. They Ain’t Ready for Me explores the complex identity and motivations of an extraordinary person who is Jewish and black, and how these intersecting identities offer her a road map for addressing one of America’s most urgent crises.
Thursday, January 23, 1:00pm & 6:30pm
Director Brad Rothschild and subject Tamar Manasseh in person

Those Who Remained
Barnabas Toth, Hungary, 2019, 83m
Hungarian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
The 42-year-old Aldo lives a solitary life in Budapest in the years following his imprisonment and the loss of his wife and child during the Holocaust. When he meets 16-year-old Klara, whose family was also murdered by the Nazis, they form a father-daughter connection that helps them both heal. As Hungary falls under the postwar shadow of the Soviet Union, the innocence of their relationship is called into question. Toth’s film is a lyrical meditation on the power of love to bolster the human spirit in the face of trauma and conflict. Hungary’s submission for the 2020 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
Preceded by
Life Is All There Is
Ron Blau, USA, 2019, 15m
World Premiere
Told through the 8mm images that a young German Jewish immigrant to the U.S. captured in the 1930s, coupled with his reflections nearly a half-century later, this moving short tells the story of a young man struggling to find his way in a new culture.
Thursday, January 23, 3:30pm & 9:00pm
Director Barnabas Toth in person

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
Caroline Link, Germany/Switzerland, 2019, 120m
German with English subtitles
New York Premiere
This stunning film from the director of the Academy Award–winning Nowhere in Africa has the grand dramatic sweep and ravishing visuals of cinematic epics from an earlier era. Based on the best-selling novel by Judith Kerr, the film begins in 1933, following 9-year-old Anna, who isn’t overly concerned with the changes coming to Berlin and the creeping dread of Hitler’s rise to power until her own father goes missing. Moving with her mother and brother to Switzerland, then Paris, then London, Anna experiences family disruption, dislocation, and assimilation into a new life. Caroline Link’s film offers a moving perspective on the experience of German Jews who fled the country before the war.
Monday, January 20, 3:45pm


RESTORATION
Broken Barriers
Charles Davenport, USA, 1919, 76m, 35mm
Silent with English intertitles
World Premiere of the Restoration
This 1919 silent is the first American film based on the same Sholem Aleichem stories as Fiddler on the Roof, but produced 50 years before the blockbuster musical. Unlike most adaptations of Aleichem’s work, Broken Barriers focuses not on Tevye the milkman, but on his daughter Khavah, who falls in love with the gentile boy Fedka and must navigate the reverberations from this with both her community and her family. A print of the film, long thought to be lost, was recently discovered by one of the producer’s granddaughters. The NYJFF will present the world premiere of the beautiful new 35mm restoration with live piano accompaniment by Donald Sosin.
Sunday, January 19, 12:30pm


SHORTS BY WOMEN
These five compelling shorts directed by women offer bold, incisive, and darkly funny looks at contemporary Jewish femininity.

Eleanor of Illinois
Danielle Durchslag, USA, 2019, 6m
U.S. Premiere
In this experimental short, Broadway star Judy Kuhn embodies Katharine Hepburn’s Eleanor of Aquitaine from The Lion in Winter, but as a contemporary Jewish mother. The result is an exploration of the emotional, class, and power dynamics of Jewish wealth.

Maman
Hila Cohen, Israel, 2018, 13m
English and Hebrew with English subtitles
New York Premiere
This idiosyncratic short follows a young woman whose Shabbat ritual is put on hold when a 90-year-old neighbor interrupts with a medical emergency.

Marriage Material
Oran Zegman, USA, 2019, 25m
New York Premiere
In this darkly comic musical, a young woman enrolls in a retreat designed to transform her into “marriage material” after her boyfriend rejects her marriage proposal. There, she must confront what she’s willing to sacrifice for love.

Silhouette of the Braids
Rotem Dimand, Israel, 2019, 15m
U.S. Premiere
In this poignant look at how mother-daughter relationships evolve from one generation to the next, a woman and her mother unearth the family archive of 8mm home movies of her grandmother’s life in 1960s Tel Aviv.

Write Me
Pearl Gluck, USA, 2019, 7m
New York City Premiere
In this moving adaptation of Deborah Kahan Kolb’s poem “After Auschwitz,” starring Lynn Cohen and tattoo artist Virginia Elwood, a woman reclaims the painful history tattooed on her body.

Sunday, January 26, 8:00pm
Directors Danielle Durchslag and Pearl Gluck in person


MASTER CLASS WITH YARON ZILBERMAN
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Amphitheater, 144 West 65th Street, NYC
This event is free and open to the public

Monday, January 20, 3:30 pm

Master Class with Yaron Zilberman
Yaron Zilberman is currently in postproduction on an eight-episode drama series, Valley of Tears, about the 1973 Yom Kippur War. His film Incitement, playing at this year’s NYJFF, about the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, won the Israeli Academy Award, the Ophir Prize, for Best Picture of 2019 and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Yaron also directed, co-wrote, and produced the internationally acclaimed A Late Quartet, about a world-renowned New York string quartet as its members struggle to stay together on the eve of their 25th anniversary, starring Academy Award–winners Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken. Yaron’s first film, the feature-length documentary Watermarks, was co-produced with HBO and ARTE. It tells the story of the champion women swimmers of the esteemed Jewish sports club Hakoah Vienna, as they reunite in their eighties to swim together one more time in the city they were forced to escape from 65 years earlier. Join Yaron Zilberman for a master class on screenwriting and directing.


SCHEDULE

Wednesday, January 15
1:00 pm           Picture of His Life      
3:15 pm           Leona

Thursday, January 16
1:00 pm           Mrs. G, preceded by Gurit Kadman 
3:30 pm           An Irrepressible Woman
6:00 pm           Four Winters: A Story of Jewish Partisan Resistance and Bravery in WWII
8:30 pm           Aulcie

Saturday, January 18
7:00 pm           Leona
9:15 pm           An Irrepressible Woman

Sunday, January 19
12:30 pm         Broken Barriers
2:45 pm           Four Winters: A Story of Jewish Partisan Resistance and Bravery in WWII
5:30 pm           Incitement
8:30 pm           Picture of His Life

Monday, January 20 – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
12:30 pm         Incitement
3:30 pm          Master Class with Yaron Zilberman (Incitement) – Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Amphitheater, Free Event
3:45 pm           When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
6:45 pm           Mrs. G, preceded by Gurit Kadman
9:15 pm           The Day After I’m Gone

Tuesday, January 21
1:00 pm           My Polish Honeymoon
3:30 pm           I Was Not Born a Mistake, preceded by Butterflies in Berlin
6:00 pm           My Polish Honeymoon
8:30 pm           I Was Not Born a Mistake, preceded by Butterflies in Berlin
Wednesday, January 22
1:15 pm           The Birch Tree Meadow
3:30 pm           God of the Piano
6:00 pm           Marceline. A Woman. A Century  
8:15 pm           The Birch Tree Meadow

Thursday, January 23
1:00 pm           They Ain’t Ready for Me
3:30 pm           Those Who Remained, preceded by Life is All There Is
6:30 pm           They Ain’t Ready for Me
9:00 pm           Those Who Remained, preceded by Life is All There Is

Saturday, January 25
7:00 pm           God of the Piano
9:00 pm           An Impossible Love 

Sunday, January 26 
1:00 pm           The Day After I’m Gone
3:15 pm           The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
5:30 pm           Ma’abarot: The Israeli Transit Camps
8:00 pm           Shorts by Women: Eleanor of Illinois, Maman, Marriage Material, Silhouette of the Braids, Write Me

Monday, January 27
12:45 pm         Dolce Fine Giornata
3:15 pm           An Impossible Love
6:00 pm           Dolce Fine Giornata
8:30 pm           The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

Tuesday, January 28
1:00 pm           The State Against Mandela and the Others
3:15 pm           Crescendo
6:15 pm           The State Against Mandela and the Others
8:30 pm           Crescendo


THE JEWISH MUSEUM
Located on New York City's famed Museum Mile, the Jewish Museum is a distinctive hub for art and Jewish culture for people of all backgrounds. Founded in 1904, the Museum was the first institution of its kind in the United States and is one of the oldest Jewish museums in the world. Devoted to exploring art and Jewish culture from ancient to contemporary, the Museum offers diverse exhibitions and programs, and maintains a unique collection of nearly 30,000 works of art, ceremonial objects, and media reflecting the global Jewish experience over more than 4,000 years. For more information, visit TheJewishMuseum.org.

FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER
Film at Lincoln Center is dedicated to supporting the art and elevating the craft of cinema and enriching film culture.

Film at Lincoln Center fulfills its mission through the programming of festivals, series, retrospectives, and new releases; the publication of Film Comment; the presentation of podcasts, talks, and special events; the creation and implementation of Artist Initiatives; and our Film in Education curriculum and screenings. Since its founding in 1969, this nonprofit organization has brought the celebration of American and international film to the world-renowned arts complex Lincoln Center, making the discussion and appreciation of cinema accessible to a broad audience, and ensuring that it remains an essential art form for years to come.

Film at Lincoln Center receives generous, year-round support from The New York Times, Shutterstock, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. American Airlines is the Official Airline of Film at Lincoln Center. For more information, visit www.filmlinc.org and follow @filmlinc on Twitter.