Warning - Contains Sexual Content | In Alila, director Amos Gitai (Kedma, Kadosh), "Israel's one-man new wave," (The Village Voice) has created an "engaging, subtly arresting drama" (Time Out New York) that examines the lives of a half dozen residents of a run-down Tel-Aviv apartment building. Th...

FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM portrays the story of Soviet "Refuseniks" through the prism of Natan Sharansky's biography. In 1977, Sharansky, a famous human rights activist, was arrested on charges of spying for the USA, treason and anti-Soviet agitation. The film takes you back to a Soviet era where t...

As vice-president of Hungary’s far-right extremist party, Csanad Szegedi espoused anti-Semitic rhetoric and Holocaust denials, and founded the Hungarian Guard, a now-banned militia inspired by a pro-Nazi group complicit in the murder of thousands of Jews during WWII. But his life was soon upended...

In this comic masterpiece, director Elia Suleiman utilizes irreverence, wit, mysticism and insight to craft an intense, hallucinogenic and extremely adept exploration of the dreams and nightmares of Palestinians and Israelis living in uncertain times.

Certified "Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes!
New Yo...

When Avi Cohen is told by the Central Bureau of Statistics that he is the most average man who ever lived, his life is turned upside down.

"Wry and funny!"- Washington City Paper

Directed by Yaniv Segalovich
Israel, 2016
Comedy, Shorts, Israeli Culture
Hebrew (with English subtitles)
18 minutes

Acclaimed Israeli artist Elie Shamir paints the view from his studio balcony – fields stretching to the horizon, ancient oak trees, and a generation of farmers that is disappearing from the vistas of the Jezreel Valley. His large oils are treasured by collectors worldwide. It was director Ben Sha...

Featuring a stunning performance from legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau ("Jules et Jim"), acclaimed Israeli director Amos Gitaï ("Promised Land") presents a meditation on memory, identity, and the reconciliation that follows a French businessman’s growing obsession with the secrets of his fa...

This powerful film was produced in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt and presents a surprising and unfamiliar portrait of Israel’s sixth prime minister. Menachem Begin led Israel for six dramatic and tumultuous years, which produced waves that are ...

CRUMBS is based on the true story of the last Passover Seder in the Warsaw Ghetto on April 19, 1943. Told from a perspective of a member of the hated "Judenrat," (Jewish Police), the audience will witness the intimate and volatile confrontations between Jews of different religious backgrounds, sp...

The beautiful coastline of Tel Aviv draws devoted beachgoers eager to find peace and relaxation in the Mediterranean. Among these, are residents of Bnei Brak, a closed orthodox suburb who frequent a gender-segregated stretch of seaside closed off to the neighboring gay beaches by a modesty fence....

Meseganio Tadela immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia with his family 28 years ago and chose to zealously retain his Ethiopian culture. He belongs to a rapidly disappearing generation. Tadela sets out on a journey through his children's homes after losing his wife. Coming to know some of life's har...

Thirty-year old Max (Félix Moati, THE FRENCH DISPATCH, SIMON AND THEODORE) is a single ophthalmologist and a real mama’s boy. Until she suddenly dies. Max should be devastated, yet he seems to be coping well. Too well. He actually still sees his mother, talks to her. She is not gone, still here,...

Shortly before her passing, Golda Meir was interviewed for the Israeli television. After the 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 off the other, Golda spoke freely, pleading her case for her...

BEN-GURION, EPILOGUE brings to life a lost interview with one of modern history's greatest leaders, David Ben-Gurion. It is 1968, he is 82 and lives in the desert. Ben-Gurion's introspective soul-searching provides a surprising vision for crucial decisions Israel needs to make today. At the time ...

THE CROSSING tells the story of the adventurous 10-year-old Gerda and her brother Otto whose parents are in the Norwegian resistance movement during the Second World War. One day, just before Christmas in 1942, Gerda and Otto’s parents are arrested, leaving the siblings on their own. Following th...

Interweaving multiple perspectives and three generations of family memories, Yael Reuveny's "Farewell Herr Schwarz" traces a Holocaust mystery with stumbling curiosity and endearing sincerity.

"An absorbing documentary that eloquently explores questions about forgiveness." - Lou Lumenick, New Yo...

Award-winning filmmakers Joseph Dorman and Oren Rudavsky recount the dramatic history of one of the most controversial, and urgently relevant political ideologies of the modern era. The century-old conflict in the Middle East continues to play a central role in world politics. And yet, amidst thi...

A deeply emotional story told through Klezmer music about identity, emigration, faith and disbelief. Once upon a time, there lived a musician and storyteller named Prince Nazaroff. Many people don’t believe he even existed, but these five modern-day musicians from across the world do. They call t...

In 1943, while the Allies are bombing Berlin and the Gestapo is purging the capital of Jews, a dangerous love affair blossoms between two women. One of them, Lilly Wust (NOWHERE IN AFRICA’s Juliane Köhler), married and the mother of four sons, enjoys the privileges of her stature as an exemplar o...

Winner of Six Israeli Academy Awards including Best Picture! The debut film from filmmaker Joseph Cedar ("Norman", "Footnote", "Beaufort", "Our Boys"), "Time of Favor" weaves an intricate tale of passion, loyalty and conspiracy amidst the contemporary political powder-keg and timeless austere bea...

The leader of a small ultra-orthodox community in Tel Aviv, Rabbi Abraham Edelman (Assi Dayan, the star of Israel's "In Treatment") is absolutely inflexible about doctrine. It's a trait that has won him no shortage of respect from his peers, but it's beginning to cause conflict with his son (Ilan...

Yaron Zilberman's "wonderful, heartwarming" (LA Times) film Watermarks narrates the story of the champion women swimmers of the legendary Vienna sports club Hakoah. Founded in 1909 in response to the notorious Aryan Paragraph, which forbade most Austrian sports clubs from accepting Jewish athlete...

Filmmaker Rüdiger Suchsland suggests that the Third Reich was essentially an immersive movie starring the German nation, produced and directed by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Hitler’s Hollywood collages key films from the more than 1000 features the Nazis produced from 1933-1945: musicals...

Meet Racheli and Menachem Hartman - a couple of religious Jews from Israel who are sent on a life-changing mission: to establish a Jewish home for the Chabad movement in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In this unique "fish out of water" story, even the simplest daily routines such as eating, shopping,...

Golden Globe nominee Shira Haas ("Unorthodox", "Shtisel") stars in this powerful story about a mother-daughter relationship which celebrates the preciousness that comes out of adversity. Asia (Alena Yiv) is a single mother to 17-year-old Vika (Shira Haas). Vika's deteriorating health urges Asia t...

From the Academy Award-Winning Director of "The Tin Drum"! | As the Allies march toward Paris in the summer of 1944, Hitler gives orders that the French capital should not fall into enemy hands, or if it does, then ‘only as a field of rubble’. The person assigned to carry out this barbaric act is...

A Jewish child deported to Kazakhstan is saved and adopted by Kasym, an old Kazakh railway-man. Kasym gives him a Kazakh name, Sabyr, that in Kazakh language means humble. The child grows up in the small Kazakh village along with other deportees Vera, a traitor's wife, and Ezhik a Polish doctor. ...

Academy Award Nominee! | After 18 years dug into a heavily fortified mountain deep in occupied Lebanon, the last Israeli soldiers enduring constant bombardment at the site of the ancient crusader stronghold called Beaufort receive orders to abandon their posts, detonate the warren of bunkers in w...

Academy Award Nominee - Best Foreign Language Film! | Teeming with Palestinian illegal immigrants, Israeli Arabs, Christians and Jews, Ajami is a cloistered urban neighborhood as treacherous and potentially deadly as the front lines of Gaza. When a Bedouin extortionist is gunned down in self defe...

Narrated by Peter Coyote - Featuring Music by the legendary John Cale! | Between 1933 and 1941, hundreds of thousands of Jewish children left Europe for the U.S. and Great Britain. Between 1941 and 1945, tens of thousands went back….all grown up, heavily armed, and ready to strike back. This comp...

Preeminent Israeli filmmaker Avi Nesher ("Past Life", "The Matchmaker") presents THE SECRETS, a beautifully evocative exploration of the passage into womanhood. While studying at a women's religious seminary in Safed, Naomi (Ania Bukstein, "Game of Thrones", "A Quiet Heart") and her new friend Mi...

Laura (Fanny Valette), a young philosophy student, lives with her immigrant family in a Jewish enclave in Paris, and is beginning to question the strict dictates of her religion. She feels bad for her sister Mathilde (Elsa Zylberstein, "An Irrepressible Woman"), who is married to a philanderer an...

Working Woman is a beautifully performed drama about the everyday struggles of being female in the workplace. Orna (Liron Ben Shlush) is the mother of three young children whose husband is struggling to start his own restaurant. To help support her family Orna lands a job with a former army super...

Exclusively on ChaiFlicks! | YidLife Crisis presents CHEWDAISM: A Taste of Jewish Montreal; a funny, heimish and enlightening historical and cultural tour of Jewish Montreal centered around its legendary foods. YidLife Crisis' Jamie Elman and Eli Batalion gorge themselves in choice eateries as th...

Academy Award nominees Toni Collette ("Little Miss Sunshine", 'The Sixth Sense") and Keisha Castle-Hughes ("Whale Rider") star in this hilarious coming-of-age story about a 13-year-old misfit (Danielle Catanzariti) at a fancy private school who secretly enrolls at a public school as a foreign exc...

Attractive, intelligent and witty, Gitel is a successful violinist who lives in a Kuybyshev apartment. To the outsider, she has everything. But Gitel hides a secret. A survivor of the Holocaust, she is haunted by painful memories of the past. One night she meets Lev, a quiet man who struggles wit...

Young Palestinian baker Omar (Adam Bakri) is accustomed to dodging surveillance bullets to cross the separation wall to visit his secret love Nadia in Israel. But occupied Palestine knows neither simple love nor clear-cut war. On the other side of the wall, the sensitive Omar becomes a freedom fi...

Female Israeli soldiers are posted to a remote desert base and spend their time pushing paper until they can return to civilian life. A smash hit in Israel and winner of the Best Narrative Feature Award at the Tribeca Film Festival, ZERO MOTIVATION is a unique, sometimes dark and often hilarious ...

In 1943, as Hitler continues to wage war across Europe, a group of college students mount an underground resistance movement in Munich. Dedicated expressly to the downfall of the monolithic Third Reich war machine, they call themselves the White Rose. One of its few female members, Sophie Scholl ...

Eric Stoltz gives one of his most powerful performances as Frank Stirn, who moves with his family to become a barber for the American Army and POW camp at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, in the summer of 1944. Embittered that he cannot fight, Frank must take a stand when a Nazi SS Officer threatens his wi...

In the award-winning HANNAH ARENDT, the sublime Barbara Sukowa reteams with director Margarethe von Trotta for a brilliant biopic of the influential German-Jewish philosopher and political theorist. Arendt’s reporting on the 1961 trial of ex-Nazi Adolf Eichmann in The New Yorker—controversial bot...

Winner of 6 Israeli Academy Awards including Best Picture, BETHLEHEM tells the story of the complex relationship between an Israeli Secret Service officer (Tsahi Halevi, "Fauda") and his teenage Palestinian informant. Shuttling back and forth between conflicting points of view, the film is a raw ...

After many years away, Ariel (Alan Sabbagh) is summoned to his childhood home in the bustling Jewish quarter of Buenos Aires, known as El Once. Over seven days of colorful Purim festivities, Ariel attempts to reconnect with his father, a big macher in the Jewish community who had little time for ...

Academy Award Winner - Best Foreign Language Film! | A love story spanning two continents, NOWHERE IN AFRICA is the extraordinary true tale of a Jewish family who flees the Nazi regime in 1938 for a remote farm in Kenya. Abandoning their once-comfortable existence in Germany, Walter Redlich, his ...

Academy Award Nominee - Best Documentary Feature (2013)! | An extraordinary work of both cinematic and political activism, 5 Broken Cameras is a deeply personal, first-hand account of non-violent resistance in Bil'in, a West Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements. Shot almost ...

What do the most ravishingly beautiful actress of the 1930s and 40s and the inventor whose concepts were the basis of cell phone and bluetooth technology have in common? They are both Hedy Lamarr, the glamour icon whose ravishing visage was the inspiration for Snow White and Cat Woman and a techn...

'The Starfish' is the true story of a German-Jew, who at the age of 10, was taken in by a non-Jewish family in Sweden to escape Nazi persecution, and the events of his life that led him to return to Sweden 60 years later to try and reunite with that family.

Directed by Tyler Gildin
United States...

In honour of the Centennial year of Montreal's Federation CJA, Jamie and Eli of YidLife Crisis present a retrospective of '100 Years of Jewish Business in Montreal'.

By Eli Batalion and Jamie Elman
Canada, 2017
Yiddish (with English subtitles)
Documentary, Short Film, Canadian History, Jewish H...

In remote Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana, volunteer worker Gabrielle Zilkha made a stunning connection with a group of people who had practiced special rites, including circumcision and Kosher dietary laws, for centuries. Only recently had they discovered they were part of a worldwide religion with millions...

In this short film by pioneering neon animator Jack Feldstein, the Nobel Prize winning Yiddish writer Isaac B. Singer recounts his memories... which seem to have a mind of their own.

Directed by Jack Feldstein
United States, 2021
Animation, Documentary, Jewish History, Yiddish Culture
Yiddish (w...

Photographer Olive returns from work to find her new flatmate, Nina rummaging through her room. Unbeknownst to Olive, Nina is about to miss the deadline to join a beauty pageant dedicated to Adolf Hitler and is in desperate need for photos for the application. She begs Olive to help her take them...

OYLEM is a poetic journey into the heart of Ashkenazi history and soul. From the vast plains of Ukraine to the streets of Vilnius and Lodz, the Yiddish narrative of Mendele and Yitskhok takes us on the traces of this sunken world.

In the limbo of Yiddishland, two men share fragments of their liv...

At a post-concert reception, a young jazz musician tries to survive aggressive grannies and other terrifying beasts.

Directed by Aaron Weinstein
United States, 2017
Comedy, Shorts, Animation, Fantasy, Jewish Culture
English
5 minutes

Shadowed by a strict, military father who inflicts severe methods of punishment as a form of discipline, seventeen-year-old Ariella (Shira Haas, Unorthodox, Shtisel, Asia) commits a grave error that her father (Yiftach Klein, 7 Days in Entebbe, Fill the Void) isn't willing to punish her for. Seek...

Contemporary ballet and environmental activism do not often go hand in hand. The Vertigo Eco-Arts Village, however, is a place where dance and ecology come together. The Eco-Arts village is an extension of the Vertigo Dance Company, the celebrated Jerusalem dance group founded by Noa Wertheim and...

BERLIN CALLING follows the daughter of a Holocaust survivor (Kastle Waserman) on a journey of discovery, as she opens the paperwork the Nazis kept on her family, and hears her father's firsthand account of being a child under Hitler's oppression. In her research, Kastle also makes a surprising di...

Merry Crisismukkah! It's the latest holiday release from your favorite nudniks. So, while you’re at work shredding those potatoes, yingling bells, or chugging gogl-mogl or eggnog, this platter of oy-ful melodies will make your season even brighter.

Created by Eli Batalion and Jamie Elman
Canada,...

n 1963, Jews clandestinely fled Morocco for Israel and other countries where they would be welcome. In the face of this exodus, Mustapha, the manager and future owner of the only bar of the small town of Bejjad, panics. And for a good reason: the local Islamic authorities, who regard bars as plac...

AND NOW, LOVE is the story of 96 year-year-old Dr. Bernard W. Bail, a highly decorated Jewish World War II hero who was shot down over Nazi Germany. Imprisoned in a German Hospital, he began a clandestine affair with his nurse, Irmgard, who introduced him to a spiritual love unlike he had ever ex...

In a documentary exploring the life and career of Julius Shulman - widely regarded by experts as the greatest architectural photographer - director Eric Bricker reveals the man who was influential in bringing to light the architectural modernist movement. Shulman's work plays a significant role i...