Jewish Film Festival 2010 — Washington DC

This year’s Washington Jewish Film Festival has an outstanding schedule, once again celebrating the “incredible diversity of Jewish life, culture and history through innovative film and invigorating programs.” I am always inspired by the scope and quality of the films in this festival, a combination of documentaries, feature films from Israel, the US, Argentina, Germany, the UK, and more, and re-discoveries, including the only appearance on film by legendary Yiddish theater star Boris Thomashefsky in a comedy with a “My Favorite Wife”-style plot called Bar Mitzvah and the rarely shown film noir Force of Evil, starring John Garfield from blacklisted director/screenwriter Abraham Polonsky. The festival will also have the premiere of The Debt, with Helen Mirren and “Avatar’s” Sam Worthington as Mossad agents who tracked down a Nazi war criminal.

This year, I am also especially looking forward to a new documentary about writer/activist (and my college professor) Grace Paley, Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story, The Infidel, a satire about a Muslim who learns he was born Jewish, and Coffee — Between Reality and Imagination, a collection of short films by of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers to create a program of short films inspired by the common theme of the universal beverage.