Published: 8 April 2020
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (JIFF VOD)
This mesmerising courtroom drama is a searing indictment of the gett (Jewish divorce) system. A hypnotic film about feminism, justice (or lack thereof) and negotiation, with an astounding performance from Ronit Elkabetz.
Yentl (Stan)
Barbra Streisand plays Yentl, a chutzpadick young woman who hopes to pass as a male student at the Yeshiva. Earnest, funny, and littered with earworm classics including Papa Can You Hear Me?
1945 (JIFF VOD)
This black-and-white Hungarian drama, set in the immediate postwar period, is stark, deliberate, cinematic. Two Orthodox Jews arrive at the train station of a rural Hungarian town, forcing the villagers to confront their collective guilt and shame.
[gallery columns="2" size="large" ids="34765,34767"]
Uncut Gems (Netflix)
Adam Sandler shakes off a decade of patchy films to perfectly portray Howie, a charismatic diamond dealer who makes a high-stakes bet. Also features a Pesach scene (complete with an afikomen hunt); this is a high voltage, nerve-jangling new film from the Safdie brothers.
Disobedience (Stan)
The forbidden love affair between Orthodox Jew Esti (played by Rachel McAdams) and Ronit (Rachel Weisz), who returns to the community following the death of her father. A sexy melodrama from Academy Award-winning director Sebastian Lelio.
Broad City (Stan)
These times call for comedic respite and who better to provide this than our favourite Jewish actresses Abbi and Ilana, best friends who struggle as they go about their daily lives in New York City with their low-paying jobs.
Foxtrot (Stan)
This is an audacious and riveting Israeli drama about a troubled family who struggle to cope with the news that something has gone tragically wrong at their son's military post. Bold and brazen film-making.
[gallery columns="2" size="large" ids="34766,34769"]
Ida (SBS On Demand)
The New Yorker calls it “a film masterpiece”; this Polish Academy Award-winning drama is stark, austere, scintillating. Set in Poland in 1962, this is the story of a young woman on the verge of taking vows as a Catholic nun. Orphaned as an infant during the German occupation of World War II, she must now meet her aunt.
Waltz With Bashir (Docplay)
A momentous animated documentary that brings to life verbal testimony from Israeli soldiers who fought in the 1982 Lebanon War. Visually stunning, potent, unsettling.
[gallery columns="1" size="large" ids="34770"]
Transparent (Amazon Prime)
If you think your family is dramatic, Transparent dials Jewish family meshugas up to eleven. The comedy revolves around the Pfeffermans, an LA Jewish family whose everyday normalcy is disrupted when the person they know as their father is a trans woman named Maura.
Intimate Stranger (Kanopy)
The Wall Street Journal calls it "a brilliant, one of a kind film... so wholly original in both style and substance as to seem completely without precedent.” Documentary filmmaker Alan Berliner tells the ordinary - or extraordinary - life story of his maternal grandfather Joseph Cassuto, a Palestinian Jew raised in Egypt.
