One of the Bay Area’s top cinema events is back – the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF), running from July 16 to August 2. The program offers 65 films from Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Palestine, Qatar, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Here’s my festival preview.
Don’t miss these three films, especially two directorial debuts – one from from Georgia and and the other a low budget US indie. Hollywood Does Abortion, is a festival center[piece, so it isn’t exactly under the radar, but I wouldn’t want anyone to overlook this eyeopening documentary. Here are my recommendations from this year’s program:
- Nandauri: In this simmering drama, Marina (Neta Riskin) is an Israeli lawyer who returns to her native Georgia on a mission to retrieve a child. Her client is also a Georgian emigre who, as a teen, abandoned her son, now 11-years-old, to be brought up by her brother; her situation now stabilized, she wants the son back. Marina must travel to rural northern Georgia, finagle the paperwork from the Georgian bureaucracy and persuade the brother to cooperate. That’s not going to be easy because the brother, Dato (Roland Okrapiridze) has sacrificed his own life to shoulder all the responsibilities for raising his nephew and caring for his elderly parents – and Dato is resentful. But Marina is a determined and resourceful badass, who has no patience for the sexism of traditional Georgians, especially arranged marriages, and she resolutely deals with men only on on her terms. Neta Riskin is brilliant as Marina, who is in a constant state of critical observation and is fierce when she needs to be. This is the first feature for Israeli writer-director Eti Tsicko; she uses a static camera in an uninterrupted nine-and-a-half minute shot that is a masterpiece of sexual tension. Nandauri was nominated for nine Ophir awards (the Israeli Oscar), including for best picture, director, screenplay and actress. Bay Area premiere.
- Human Theories: This smart and sharply funny film is a compendium of snapshots of educated, thirtyish New Yorkers as they navigate regular life. In her debut feature, writer-director Jess Zeidman deploys a cast of fifty to create a 105-minute triumph of observational humor. Sketch comedy a la SNL tends to milk the joke, lingering too long, but Zeidman and editor Ryan Martin Brown time each vignette impeccably. West Coast premiere.
- Hollywood Does Abortion: The political, legal and ethical aspects of abortion get plenty of attention, but this eyeopening documentary probes the impact of screen depictions of abortion upon the popular culture. We may think of the groundbreaking 1972 episode of Maude, but, this film documents movies and television shows since, finding that they disproportionately depict legal abortion as dangerous, traumatizing, shameful and even lethal. Extraordinarily well-sourced, Hollywood Does Abortion is surprisingly revealing and an essential addition to the public discourse. West Coast premiere.
The fest starts this week and runs through August 2. Check out the entire program and buy tickets at SFJFF.
