Second City Tzivi

From the 46th annual CIFF: Set in Buenos Aires at the start of Argentina’s infamous “Dirty War,” I Miss You is told from the POV of  “Javi” (Fermin Volcoff), a high school kid sent to live with relatives in Mexico when his older brother “Adrian” (Martin Slipak) suddenly disappears. Although the film doesn’t focus on the Jewish […]

Note: This review was originally published in the World Jewish Digest on 4/04: “BROKEN WINGS, an internationally award-winning Israeli film, has just opened in theaters here in the United States. However, even though this film is “new” to us, it was actually made in 2000. This is an enormously important fact that affects what you […]

NOTE: This reivew was originally published in the World Jewish Digest on 5/04: “Who owns Anne Frank?” Cynthia Ozick asked, in a provocative essay she published in the NEW YORKER magazine in 1997. It’s easy to agree with Ozick’s attack on those who strip Anne Frank of her Jewish identity and make her into a […]

Note: This review was originally published by the JUF News on 10/07: “…In the Ashkenazim, Dothan and Meyer focus on a new generation.  These 30-somethings feel compelled to ask their grandparents questions that their own never dared to ask.  Israelis in this “third generation” (the second generation to be born in Israel) are now reaching […]

  Note: This review was originally published in the JUF News on 10/08: “Israeli Arabs make their mark this year both in front of the camera as well as behind it. “Amjad,” the lead character in the TV comedy Arab Labor, works as a journalist in the city, but still lives near his parents in […]

Note: This review was originally published in Jewish Film World on 3/1/08: “When new Israeli films open internationally, viewers bring lots of opinions into the theatre with them. This is inevitable, of course; we carry our mental baggage with us wherever we go. But all too often, when I read reviews of Israeli films (by […]

NOTE: This review was originally published in The World Jewish Digest on 3/1/08: “BERGA is an extremely powerful film, using original footage blended with recreated scenes. The soldiers, filmed as “talking heads,” are seen as old men until the very end, when Guggenheim shows them reunited with their families in post-war photographs. They tell the […]