Winner of Six Israeli Academy Awards including Best Picture! The debut film from filmmaker Joseph Cedar ("Norman", "Footnote", "Beaufort", "Our Boys"), "Time of Favor" weaves an intricate tale of passion, loyalty and conspiracy amidst the contemporary political powder-keg and timeless austere bea...

The leader of a small ultra-orthodox community in Tel Aviv, Rabbi Abraham Edelman (Assi Dayan, the star of Israel's "In Treatment") is absolutely inflexible about doctrine. It's a trait that has won him no shortage of respect from his peers, but it's beginning to cause conflict with his son (Ilan...

Yaron Zilberman's "wonderful, heartwarming" (LA Times) film Watermarks narrates the story of the champion women swimmers of the legendary Vienna sports club Hakoah. Founded in 1909 in response to the notorious Aryan Paragraph, which forbade most Austrian sports clubs from accepting Jewish athlete...

Filmmaker Rüdiger Suchsland suggests that the Third Reich was essentially an immersive movie starring the German nation, produced and directed by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Hitler’s Hollywood collages key films from the more than 1000 features the Nazis produced from 1933-1945: musicals...

Meet Racheli and Menachem Hartman - a couple of religious Jews from Israel who are sent on a life-changing mission: to establish a Jewish home for the Chabad movement in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In this unique "fish out of water" story, even the simplest daily routines such as eating, shopping,...

Golden Globe nominee Shira Haas ("Unorthodox", "Shtisel") stars in this powerful story about a mother-daughter relationship which celebrates the preciousness that comes out of adversity. Asia (Alena Yiv) is a single mother to 17-year-old Vika (Shira Haas). Vika's deteriorating health urges Asia t...

From the Academy Award-Winning Director of "The Tin Drum"! | As the Allies march toward Paris in the summer of 1944, Hitler gives orders that the French capital should not fall into enemy hands, or if it does, then ‘only as a field of rubble’. The person assigned to carry out this barbaric act is...

A Jewish child deported to Kazakhstan is saved and adopted by Kasym, an old Kazakh railway-man. Kasym gives him a Kazakh name, Sabyr, that in Kazakh language means humble. The child grows up in the small Kazakh village along with other deportees Vera, a traitor's wife, and Ezhik a Polish doctor. ...

Academy Award Nominee! | After 18 years dug into a heavily fortified mountain deep in occupied Lebanon, the last Israeli soldiers enduring constant bombardment at the site of the ancient crusader stronghold called Beaufort receive orders to abandon their posts, detonate the warren of bunkers in w...

Academy Award Nominee - Best Foreign Language Film! | Teeming with Palestinian illegal immigrants, Israeli Arabs, Christians and Jews, Ajami is a cloistered urban neighborhood as treacherous and potentially deadly as the front lines of Gaza. When a Bedouin extortionist is gunned down in self defe...

Narrated by Peter Coyote - Featuring Music by the legendary John Cale! | Between 1933 and 1941, hundreds of thousands of Jewish children left Europe for the U.S. and Great Britain. Between 1941 and 1945, tens of thousands went back….all grown up, heavily armed, and ready to strike back. This comp...

Preeminent Israeli filmmaker Avi Nesher ("Past Life", "The Matchmaker") presents THE SECRETS, a beautifully evocative exploration of the passage into womanhood. While studying at a women's religious seminary in Safed, Naomi (Ania Bukstein, "Game of Thrones", "A Quiet Heart") and her new friend Mi...

Laura (Fanny Valette), a young philosophy student, lives with her immigrant family in a Jewish enclave in Paris, and is beginning to question the strict dictates of her religion. She feels bad for her sister Mathilde (Elsa Zylberstein, "An Irrepressible Woman"), who is married to a philanderer an...

Working Woman is a beautifully performed drama about the everyday struggles of being female in the workplace. Orna (Liron Ben Shlush) is the mother of three young children whose husband is struggling to start his own restaurant. To help support her family Orna lands a job with a former army super...

Exclusively on ChaiFlicks! | YidLife Crisis presents CHEWDAISM: A Taste of Jewish Montreal; a funny, heimish and enlightening historical and cultural tour of Jewish Montreal centered around its legendary foods. YidLife Crisis' Jamie Elman and Eli Batalion gorge themselves in choice eateries as th...

Academy Award nominees Toni Collette ("Little Miss Sunshine", 'The Sixth Sense") and Keisha Castle-Hughes ("Whale Rider") star in this hilarious coming-of-age story about a 13-year-old misfit (Danielle Catanzariti) at a fancy private school who secretly enrolls at a public school as a foreign exc...

Attractive, intelligent and witty, Gitel is a successful violinist who lives in a Kuybyshev apartment. To the outsider, she has everything. But Gitel hides a secret. A survivor of the Holocaust, she is haunted by painful memories of the past. One night she meets Lev, a quiet man who struggles wit...

Young Palestinian baker Omar (Adam Bakri) is accustomed to dodging surveillance bullets to cross the separation wall to visit his secret love Nadia in Israel. But occupied Palestine knows neither simple love nor clear-cut war. On the other side of the wall, the sensitive Omar becomes a freedom fi...

Female Israeli soldiers are posted to a remote desert base and spend their time pushing paper until they can return to civilian life. A smash hit in Israel and winner of the Best Narrative Feature Award at the Tribeca Film Festival, ZERO MOTIVATION is a unique, sometimes dark and often hilarious ...

In 1943, as Hitler continues to wage war across Europe, a group of college students mount an underground resistance movement in Munich. Dedicated expressly to the downfall of the monolithic Third Reich war machine, they call themselves the White Rose. One of its few female members, Sophie Scholl ...

Eric Stoltz gives one of his most powerful performances as Frank Stirn, who moves with his family to become a barber for the American Army and POW camp at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, in the summer of 1944. Embittered that he cannot fight, Frank must take a stand when a Nazi SS Officer threatens his wi...

In the award-winning HANNAH ARENDT, the sublime Barbara Sukowa reteams with director Margarethe von Trotta for a brilliant biopic of the influential German-Jewish philosopher and political theorist. Arendt’s reporting on the 1961 trial of ex-Nazi Adolf Eichmann in The New Yorker—controversial bot...

Winner of 6 Israeli Academy Awards including Best Picture, BETHLEHEM tells the story of the complex relationship between an Israeli Secret Service officer (Tsahi Halevi, "Fauda") and his teenage Palestinian informant. Shuttling back and forth between conflicting points of view, the film is a raw ...

After many years away, Ariel (Alan Sabbagh) is summoned to his childhood home in the bustling Jewish quarter of Buenos Aires, known as El Once. Over seven days of colorful Purim festivities, Ariel attempts to reconnect with his father, a big macher in the Jewish community who had little time for ...

Academy Award Winner - Best Foreign Language Film! | A love story spanning two continents, NOWHERE IN AFRICA is the extraordinary true tale of a Jewish family who flees the Nazi regime in 1938 for a remote farm in Kenya. Abandoning their once-comfortable existence in Germany, Walter Redlich, his ...

Academy Award Nominee - Best Documentary Feature (2013)! | An extraordinary work of both cinematic and political activism, 5 Broken Cameras is a deeply personal, first-hand account of non-violent resistance in Bil'in, a West Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements. Shot almost ...

What do the most ravishingly beautiful actress of the 1930s and 40s and the inventor whose concepts were the basis of cell phone and bluetooth technology have in common? They are both Hedy Lamarr, the glamour icon whose ravishing visage was the inspiration for Snow White and Cat Woman and a techn...

'The Starfish' is the true story of a German-Jew, who at the age of 10, was taken in by a non-Jewish family in Sweden to escape Nazi persecution, and the events of his life that led him to return to Sweden 60 years later to try and reunite with that family.

Directed by Tyler Gildin
United States...

In honour of the Centennial year of Montreal's Federation CJA, Jamie and Eli of YidLife Crisis present a retrospective of '100 Years of Jewish Business in Montreal'.

By Eli Batalion and Jamie Elman
Canada, 2017
Yiddish (with English subtitles)
Documentary, Short Film, Canadian History, Jewish H...

In remote Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana, volunteer worker Gabrielle Zilkha made a stunning connection with a group of people who had practiced special rites, including circumcision and Kosher dietary laws, for centuries. Only recently had they discovered they were part of a worldwide religion with millions...

In this short film by pioneering neon animator Jack Feldstein, the Nobel Prize winning Yiddish writer Isaac B. Singer recounts his memories... which seem to have a mind of their own.

Directed by Jack Feldstein
United States, 2021
Animation, Documentary, Jewish History, Yiddish Culture
Yiddish (w...

Photographer Olive returns from work to find her new flatmate, Nina rummaging through her room. Unbeknownst to Olive, Nina is about to miss the deadline to join a beauty pageant dedicated to Adolf Hitler and is in desperate need for photos for the application. She begs Olive to help her take them...

OYLEM is a poetic journey into the heart of Ashkenazi history and soul. From the vast plains of Ukraine to the streets of Vilnius and Lodz, the Yiddish narrative of Mendele and Yitskhok takes us on the traces of this sunken world.

In the limbo of Yiddishland, two men share fragments of their liv...

At a post-concert reception, a young jazz musician tries to survive aggressive grannies and other terrifying beasts.

Directed by Aaron Weinstein
United States, 2017
Comedy, Shorts, Animation, Fantasy, Jewish Culture
English
5 minutes

Shadowed by a strict, military father who inflicts severe methods of punishment as a form of discipline, seventeen-year-old Ariella (Shira Haas, Unorthodox, Shtisel, Asia) commits a grave error that her father (Yiftach Klein, 7 Days in Entebbe, Fill the Void) isn't willing to punish her for. Seek...

Contemporary ballet and environmental activism do not often go hand in hand. The Vertigo Eco-Arts Village, however, is a place where dance and ecology come together. The Eco-Arts village is an extension of the Vertigo Dance Company, the celebrated Jerusalem dance group founded by Noa Wertheim and...

BERLIN CALLING follows the daughter of a Holocaust survivor (Kastle Waserman) on a journey of discovery, as she opens the paperwork the Nazis kept on her family, and hears her father's firsthand account of being a child under Hitler's oppression. In her research, Kastle also makes a surprising di...

Merry Crisismukkah! It's the latest holiday release from your favorite nudniks. So, while you’re at work shredding those potatoes, yingling bells, or chugging gogl-mogl or eggnog, this platter of oy-ful melodies will make your season even brighter.

Created by Eli Batalion and Jamie Elman
Canada,...

n 1963, Jews clandestinely fled Morocco for Israel and other countries where they would be welcome. In the face of this exodus, Mustapha, the manager and future owner of the only bar of the small town of Bejjad, panics. And for a good reason: the local Islamic authorities, who regard bars as plac...

AND NOW, LOVE is the story of 96 year-year-old Dr. Bernard W. Bail, a highly decorated Jewish World War II hero who was shot down over Nazi Germany. Imprisoned in a German Hospital, he began a clandestine affair with his nurse, Irmgard, who introduced him to a spiritual love unlike he had ever ex...

In a documentary exploring the life and career of Julius Shulman - widely regarded by experts as the greatest architectural photographer - director Eric Bricker reveals the man who was influential in bringing to light the architectural modernist movement. Shulman's work plays a significant role i...

An intimate portrait of Holocaust survivor Helena Weinrauch, who movingly tells her story of resiliency and courage in the face of Nazi brutality. Despite the many horrors she endured, she never loses her joie de vivre or her desire to forgive those who brutalized her in the past. ​

Best Documen...

Jamie Elman & Eli Batalion, the hilarious stars of the smash hit Yiddish comedy series YidLife Crisis, sit down with the learned and patient Rabbi Lisa Grushcow to answer all the questions you’ve ever asked about Hanukkah (and some you never have) in this insightful and entertaining short! #Khani...

Maurice Sendak, the award-winning author of “Where The Wild Things Are” reflects on his creative life, success, and frustrations, including interviews with his celebrity friends.

Directed by Lance Bangs and Spike Jonze
United States, 2009
Documentary, Literature, Kids,, LGBT Stories, Jewish Cult...

A poignant, thought-provoking account of friendship and the toll of inherited guilt, WHAT OUR FATHERS DID explores the relationship between two men, each of whom are the children of very high-ranking Nazi officials and possess starkly contrasting attitudes toward their fathers. Eminent human righ...

As a director and Hollywood producer, Michał Waszyński made over 40 films and worked with major movie stars including Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale and Orson Welles. His true obsession, though, was 'The Dybbuk' or 'Between Two Worlds', directed by Waszyński in 1937 and based on an old Jewish le...

JAY MYSELF documents the monumental move of renowned photographer and artist, Jay Maisel, who, in February 2015 after forty-eight years, begrudgingly sold his home—the 36,000 square-foot, 100-year-old landmark building in Manhattan known simply as “The Bank.” Through the intimate lens of filmmake...

How do you get even with a womanizer? You make him a woman! The wheel of karma takes a hilarious spin when a magical curse transforms Sam, a misogynistic playboy, into a beautiful woman who must learn how to value females by being one herself. But when she starts feeling more romance than bromanc...

After a decade of stardom in Israel, American dancer Bobbi Jene decides to leave behind her prominent position at the world-famous Batsheva Dance Company, as well as the love of her life, to return to the U.S. to create her own boundary breaking art. Tracking the personal and professional challen...

Israeli director Yael Hersonski examines a recently found film reel from an unfinished Nazi movie entitled "Das Ghetto" in this award-winning documentary. For decades, historians have relied on "Das Ghetto" as a portrayal of life in occupied Warsaw and this new footage provides rare insights into...

Smitten with a Jewish woman (Jennifer Love Hewitt), a gentile (Ivan Sergei) asks his Jewish pal (Joel David Moore) to advise him on how to act like a member of the community.

"Entertaining? Yes. Funny? Oh my God, yes! One of the funniest films of the year!" - Debbie Lynn Elias, Behind the Lens

...

Holocaust survivors and Berlin residents, Regina (Oma) Karolinski and Bella Katz, have been inseparable friends for two generations. Creating food for the soul in their kitchen using traditional recipes, their love of these home-cooked dishes is the only remaining visceral link to a childhood cru...

While walking through the forest during the Nazi occupation, a group of young people find a wounded Jewish man. With the Nazis on the hunt, they now have to decide what to do with him.

"Jews are the truly silent victims in a story that instead takes the viewpoint of morally dubious gentiles, tor...

Berlin, 1934. The ambitious and beautiful young Czech actress Lida Baarová is about to launch her career in the German Reich at Berlin's Babelsberg Film Studios - a dream come true. But how long will this dream last when she decides to become Joseph Goebbels' mistress?

Directed by Filip Renc
Dra...

Two sisters living in Paris during the late 1930s possess the supernatural ability to connect with ghosts. After a world tour performing séances for socialites, they meet a visionary French producer who hires them to shoot an ambitious experimental film. What they perceive as a perfect opportunit...

In this tender and intimate romance, a married Hasidic woman falls for a secular stranger, opening her eyes to a whole new world and forcing her to choose between her faith and her heart.

Hadas Yaron (of the internationally acclaimed film Fill the Void) returns to the big screen in Maxime Giroux...

James Franco stars as the young Allen Ginsberg – poet, counter-culture adventurer and chronicler of the Beat Generation. In his famously confessional style, Ginsberg recounts the road trips, love affairs and search for personal liberation that led to the most timeless and electrifying work of his...

A grieving father steals medicinal marijuana from a hospice, skips work and hangs out with his estranged neighbor's son, while his wife tries to get back to her daily routine as she fights off school teachers, stray kittens and dental clinic workers.

"Uproariously funny and heart-wrenchingly mov...

When Trinidadian-born filmmaker Su Goldfish discovers her father is a German Jew who fled the terrors of Kristallnacht to the only place that would let him in without a visa, she wonders what happened to the rest of the Goldfish family. Is she really the last one? Told through a personal archive ...

'The German Neighbor' follows the steps of Adolf Eichmann’s awkward and unusual life in Argentina and his remarkable defense at the trial in Jerusalem. Integrating impressive archive material, the film combines the exploration of Eichmann’s daily life during his exile in Argentina with images of ...