Welcome to the 11th year of the Morris and Mollye Fogelman International Jewish Film Festival! We are thrilled to be bringing this year's film festival completely in-person and in our brand new, state-of-the-art Belz Theater at the Orgel Family Performing Arts Center! Happy watching!

February 6, 2025

7:00pm: Running on Sand

Nominated for the Israeli Academy Award for Best Film, Running on Sand is a feel-good tale of mistaken identity. Aumari, a young Eritrean refugee in the process of being deported, is mistaken for a professional soccer player being brought to Israel to help save the struggling Maccabi Netanya team. Despite having no soccer experience, he plays along and somehow manages to reinvigorate the floundering squad. Amid their quest for victory, he finds himself falling for the team owner’s daughter and worrying if his true identity will be uncovered. Starring the charismatic Congo-born actor Chancela Mongoza and a group of other African migrant actors, Running on Sand has both humor and heart and sheds light on the challenges faced by refugees.

Running Time 104 minutes
Country Israel
Language Hebrew with English Subtitles
Year 2024

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February 11, 2025

7:00pm: Avenue of Giants

Beautiful performances from Stephen Lang (Avatar) and Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade) anchor a tale of personal strength and sacrifice in this cinematic masterpiece inspired by true events about a man harboring a haunting secret as a Holocaust survivor. Set in locations as disparate as Terezín, Prague, and the Avenue of the Giants drive in California’s Humboldt Redwoods State Park, this is an inspiring story about the transformative power of friendship and healing. For more than 50 years, Auschwitz survivor Herbert Heller (Stephen Lang) kept his memories of the Holocaust secret — even from his wife and children. But when he meets Abbey (Elsie Fisher), a troubled teen dealing with her own unspoken pain, Herbert decides it’s time to talk and finally open his heart. Through sharing their personal traumas, Herbert and Abbey become the unlikeliest of friends, allies in healing whose bond brings them a previously undiscovered sense of purpose. With stunning reenactments of Herbert’s struggles to survive during WWII, this touching film demonstrates that hope and redemption can come from anywhere if we’re open to it.

Running Time 102 minutes
Country USA
Language English
Year 2023

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February 13, 2025

7:00pm: Shari & Lamb Chop

Before Mister Rogers there was Shari Lewis. A pioneer of children’s television, Lewis was the perky powerhouse behind NBC’s wildly popular family variety shows in the 50s and 60s. A multitalented singer, dancer, and magician, Lewis is best known for her skillful ventriloquism as the human counterpart to the beloved sock puppet Lamb Chop. Primed for the spotlight with her unconventional upbringing in the Bronx: Lewis’s mother was a pianist and proud feminist, her father a Yeshiva University professor who moonlighted as Peter Pan the Magic Man. When an injury sidelined Lewis’s dance aspirations, the misfortune led her to discover her passion for ventriloquism. Through the highs of those early years at NBC to her crushing cancellation when animation began to edge out live children’s television, Lewis’s talent and perseverance served as the cornerstone on which she waged her incredible comeback. From the director of Love, Gilda (SFJFF38), Shari & Lamb Chop features home movies, archival footage, and candid interviews with family and colleagues, cementing Lewis’s status as an original television icon. — Lori Donnelly

Running Time 92 minutes
Country USA
Language English
Year 2023

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February 16, 2025

2:00pm: A Photographic Memory

A Photographic Memory is an intimate, genre-bending portrait of a daughter’s attempt to piece together a portrait of her mother, an avant-garde journalist and a woman she never knew. Uncovering the vast archive Sheila Turner Seed produced, including lost interviews with iconic photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gordon Parks, Cecil Beaton, Bruce Davidson, Lisette Model, and others, the film explores memory, legacy, and stories left untold.

Running Time 87 minutes
Country USA
Language English
Year 2024

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February 19, 2025

7:00pm: Air War

A rivalry between two charismatic Israeli air force fighter pilots reaches breaking point on the eve of the six-day war. After single handedly shooting down six Egyptian migs in aerial combat, the young, brash Lt. Ran Nesher is awarded a new assignment: to take over the command of a fighter squadron.
The squadron’s second-in-command, the more methodical and disciplined Lt. Eitan Rom is profoundly threatened by his new reckless Commander who is clearly inexperienced and domineering.

The ongoing power struggle begins to affect the performance of the squadron. However, as their country’s existence hangs in the balance, the two men must learn to work together. It is only then that they are ready to lead their squadron to victory.

Running Time 106 minutes
Country Israel
Language Hebrew with English Subtitles
Year 2024

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February 24, 2025

7:00pm: Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara

In 1858 Bologna, a 6-year-old named Edgardo Mortara was seized by authorities of the papal state, taken away from his Jewish parents, and placed in the care of the Church. Believed to have been baptized in the cradle under odd circumstances, the child would be claimed as a Catholic. His mind erased of his family’s religious heritage and beliefs, Edgardo was, unbeknownst to him, at the center of an international firestorm that led directly to the Italian people’s rejection of the Pope’s rule amidst the tumultuous Risorgimento. In this sumptuously mounted film from treasured octogenarian director Marco Bellocchio, the Mortara case becomes an extraordinary, nearly operatic historical drama. Kidnapped is at once a personal, human-scale narrative of a family in crisis, following parents who will do anything to retrieve their child from the clutches of a ruthless theocratic government, and a wide-scope portrait of a country on the cusp of revolution.

Running Time 134 minutes
Country Italy
Language Italian and Hebrew with English Subtitles
Year 2023

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February 27, 2025

7:00pm: Auction

First known as a regular screenwriter for Jacques Rivette and a contributing critic at Cahiers du Cinéma, Pascal Bonitzer emerged in subsequent decades as an esteemed director in his own right (Spellbound, Rendez-Vous 2020). This closely observed drama, for which he also penned the script, follows André Masson (Alex Lutz), a modern art appraiser who works for an auction house. As boldly assured in his professional expertise as he is unflaggingly cool and collected with his colleagues—including his ex-partner Bettina (Léa Drucker, Last Summer), with whom he maintains a careful friendship—André’s routine is unexpectedly disrupted by the discovery of a long-lost work by Egon Schiele, a masterwork that had gone missing decades earlier following its confiscation by Nazi officials. Initially skeptical that any such undiscovered painting could still be recovered, André grows convinced of its authenticity—but the ramifications for his career, as well as his contentious relationship with his intern Aurore (Louise Chevillotte), are unexpected and transformative.

Running Time 91 minutes
Country France
Language French with English Subtitles
Year 2023

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March 2, 2025

2:00pm: Here Lived

The story of hidden children, murdered parents, and the stones that bring healing. Gunter Demnig’s Stolpersteine project provides a path from one of the most egregious wrongs of history, the Nazi reign of terror, to individual and community reconciliation.

Running Time 79 minutes
Country USA
Language English
Year 2024

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March 4, 2025

7:00pm: Less Than Kosher

Bringing together the comedic essence of Shiva Baby and the musical charm of The Jazz Singer, this delightful tale dives into the tapestry of modern Jewish existence and sheds light on realities that might be considered “less than kosher.” At 20, Viv was a burgeoning young singer. By 30, her once-promising music career had regrettably led her back to her mother’s basement. However, destiny takes an unexpected turn when this self-proclaimed “bad Jew” finds herself reluctantly accepting a position as a Cantor at her family’s synagogue. That leads her through a roundelay of weddings, brisses, and shivas — complete with fantasy production numbers — as she recovers her joy in singing. Along the way, she also finds herself entangled in a whirlwind of forbidden affairs, psychedelic experiences, tense familial conflicts, and self-discovery.

Running Time 65 minutes
Country Canada
Language English
Year 2023

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Date: February 6, 2025 - March 4, 2025

Location: Memphis Jewish Community Center - 6560 Poplar Ave Memphis, TN 38138

Cost: $10 Community / $8 Member

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