ANNUAL RUTGERS JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL TO RUN NOV. 7–21

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – Tickets are now on sale for the 22nd annual Rutgers Jewish Film Festival, which will be held from Sunday, November 7, through Sunday, November 21. Presented in a hybrid format this year–all films will be available in the Virtual Cinema and five film screenings will be presented in person at Rutgers Cinema and the Princeton Garden Theatre. The festival features a diverse array of award-winning international films from the United States, Israel, Germany, and Switzerland as well as engaging online discussions with filmmakers, scholars, and special guests.

Virtual film tickets are $11, and an all-access pass is available for $95. Please note that some films have a limited time frame for online viewing and some are limited by geographic location. Tickets for in-person screenings must be ordered online through the theaters and will be available November 7. Campus screenings are free, but tickets must be reserved in advance. All guests must be fully vaccinated and wear masks in theaters. The festival is sponsored by Rutgers’ Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life and is made possible by a generous grant from the Karma Foundation. For more information or to purchase virtual film tickets, visit BildnerCenter.Rutgers.edu.

The festival kicks-off on Sunday, November 7, with the opening night film Wet Dog, a moving German drama that explores complex issues of cultural and religious identity for a Jewish-Iranian teen living in a largely Arab and Muslim suburb of Berlin. The film is based on Arye Shalicar’s provocative autobiography Ein Nasser Hund, and Arye Shalicar will discuss the film on Zoom on the festival’s opening day. The in-person screening of this film is scheduled at Rutgers Cinema on November 13 at 8:00 p.m.

The festival features the East Coast premiere of the Israeli documentary Muranow, named for a Polish neighborhood with a vibrant Jewish past (pre-WWII) that continues to haunt its present. Director Chen Shelach will discuss the film on Zoom, in conversation with Nancy Sinkoff, professor of history and Jewish studies at Rutgers.

Two other powerful documentaries make their New Jersey debuts at the festival; The Israeli film Marry Me However is an important follow-up to the groundbreaking film Trembling Before God, which the Rutgers Jewish Film Festival screened in 2001. Twenty years later, the film explores the tremendous challenges for LGBTQ Jews who have entered into traditional marriages in order to comply with Torah laws and to be accepted by their families and religious communities. Yerusalem: The Incredible Story of Ethiopian Jewry tells the moving history of the Beta-Israel community, who kept their Jewish faith against all odds for thousands of years. Israeli director Levi Zini will discuss the film on Zoom. The in-person screening at Rutgers Cinema on November 21 is cosponsored by the New Jersey-Israel Commission.

The festival will feature online discussions with filmmakers who enrich and enhance the way the audience encounters the films: Director Becky Tahel will discuss American Birthright, her very personal journey to understand Judaism’s perspectives on interfaith marriage; Israeli filmmaker Maya Sarfaty will talk about Love It Was Not, the riveting true story of an SS officer at Auschwitz who falls in love with and protects a Jewish prisoner—and her testimony thirty years later at his war crimes trial; Kurdish director Mano Khalil will discuss his new film Neighbours. Inspired by the director’s own childhood, the film is set in a Syrian border town in the early 1980s and looks at the absurdities of war through a child’s eyes.