March 30-April 10

All showings except Opening Night are at the Neon Theatre 130 East Fifth Street, Dayton

Special Opening Night Event
Thursday, March 30, 7 p.m.
at Showcase Cinemas Cross Pointe 6751 Loop Road, Centerville

All tickets $7, available in advance or at door.

Season passes are $55 and include all 9 films.

Contact Marc Jacob at 853-0372 or mjacob@jfgd.net for more info.

To purchase tickets, call Karen Steiger at 853-0372.

Live and Become!
Thursday, March 30, 7 p.m. at Showcase Cinemas Cross Pointe

Monday, April 10, 7 p.m. at the Neon

The award-winning, riveting tale of a starving boy airlifted from Ethiopia during Operation Moses. Though he is not Jewish, a Falasha woman takes his hand, passes him off as her son Shlomo and brings him to Israel and a new life. When she dies, Shlomo is adopted by a liberal Israeli couple. Though living a comfortable life, Shlomo struggles with the gravity of his secret identity. Can he come to terms with the longing for his true mother he left behind with this new world and culture?

Actor Sikak Sabahat will lead a discussion about the film at the opening event.

Wondrous Oblivion
Sunday, April 2, 2 p.m.

Eleven-year-old David Wiseman is mad about cricket but no good at it. When a Jamaican family moves in next door and builds a cricket net in the back garden, David is in seventh heaven. But this is 1960s England. When the neighbors start to make life difficult for the new arrivals, David’s Jewish family is caught in the middle; he must choose between fitting in and standing up for his new friends.

Turn Left At The End of the World
Sunday, April 2, 7 p.m.

Two Jewish immigrant families from India and Morocco become unexpected neighbors, deep in the Negev desert. While the parents regard each other with suspicion, their teenage daughters become special friends. Several complex relationships ensue. It takes a major strike at the town’s only employer to bring these two ethnic groups together, with hilarious results. To pass the time and recapture their old life, the Indian community organizes a cricket game and soon the Moroccans join in. The town has renewed hope of tourist income when a traveling British cricket team agrees to play them in an exhibition game.

Rashevski’s Tango
Tuesday, April 4, 10 a.m.

Rashevski’s Tango begins with the demise of the Rashevski matriarch, Rosa, who hated religion and rabbis, but shocks her family by requesting an Orthodox burial. As her extended clan gathers for the funeral, the film presents us with the kaleidoscope of Jewish life in one family, with Holocaust survivors, 20-somethings, intermarrieds, newly-observants, converts, Israelis and Diaspora-dwellers. Rashevski’s Tango is a heartwarming ensemble comedy that celebrates the multiplicity of Jewish lives in the modern world.

Marilyn Klaben, education director of the Human Race Theatre Company, will lead a discussion following the film.

This program is sponsored by Hadassah.

Go For Zucker
Tuesday, April 4, 7 p.m.

A groundbreaking comedy from Germany that, for the first time, presents a modern Jewish family neither as victims nor tortured survivors, but as a complex and conflicted family unit hilariously at odds as they seek to fulfill the last wishes of the family matriarch. Can two brothers — one a pool-shark from East Berlin, the other an Orthodox Jew from the West — make it through a week of sitting shiva together in order to inherit their mother’s fortune?

When Do We Eat?
Wednesday, April 5, 7:30 p.m.

When Do We Eat? is the story of the “world’s fastest Seder” gone horribly awry. It’s about an old-school dad (Michael Lerner) who’s as tough on his sons as his father (Jack Klugman) is on him. On this night, however, one of the boys slips Dad a dose of special, psychedelic Ecstasy in order “to give him a new perspective.” Meanwhile, Mom (Lesley Ann Warren) brings a handsome stranger to dinner and the kids take sides. By the end of the night, however, Dad’s visions turn him into a modern day Moses intent on leading this hungry group to the promised land of family forgiveness.

Walk on Water
Thursday, April 6, 7 p.m.

Eyal is a Mossad special agent with a brusque, sardonic manner and a lack of sentiment for the terrorists he targets for assassination. After an unexpected tragedy in Eyal’s personal life, his supervisor sends him on an unusual assignment: to track down a Nazi war criminal in hiding. Eyal must pose as a tour guide to spy on the old man’s adult grandchildren. This brother-and-sister pair, Axel and Pia, are the sort of well-meaning bourgeois liberals that grate on Eyal’s nerves. But as he drives Axel around the historical sites of Israel, he begins to feel an affinity for the gentle, soft-spoken boy. When Axel drags his host to a gay bar (and adds insult to injury by flirting with a Palestinian Arab), Eyal withdraws abruptly, asking to be removed from the case. But later, Eyal makes a trip to Germany that forces both men to reconsider their political and erotic allegiances.

39 Pounds of Love
Sunday, April 9, 2 & 4:15 p.m.
39 Pounds of Love is the inspirational and humorous story of Ami Ankilewitz, a 3-D animator in Israel whose bodily motion is limited to a single finger on his left hand.  At birth, Ami was diagnosed with a rare form of muscular dystrophy, later diagnosed as Spinal Muscular Atrophy. He was predicted to survive only to the age of 6. Now, 30 years later, he leaves the woman he loves and returns to the United States to confront the childhood doctor who predicted his early demise. Along the way, he comes to terms with a major incident from his past and pursues a lifelong dream: to ride a Harley Davidson. The film is an emotional roller coaster, a fascinating, humorous and inspirational ride through life.
Producer/director Dani Menkin will discuss his film after the screening.

Campfire
Sunday, April 9, 7 p.m.

The year is 1981. Rachel Gerlik, a 42- year-old widow and mother of two beautiful teenage daughters — Esti and Tami — wants to join the founding group of a new religious settlement in the West Bank. The problem is that the acceptance committee won’t accept her unless she remarries and proves that she and her daughters can meet the group’s religious and ideological standards. When Tami, her youngest daughter, is accused of seducing some boys from her youth movement, Rachel is forced to weigh her alliances. Only Yossi, a 50 year-old bachelor, and the new man in Rachel’s life, can show Rachel that living as an outcast is not as bad as it seems. This film is nominated for 13 Israeli Oscars, one in every category — that’s more than any other film — in a year in which critics agree the Israeli movie industry has produced better movies than ever.