Gold for Fools(NaN)

An American Pickle(en)

An immigrant worker at a pickle factory is accidentally preserved for 100 years and wakes up in modern day Brooklyn. He learns his only surviving relative is his great grandson, a computer coder who he can’t connect with.

40 Nickels(en)

Based her grandfather’s boyhood in St. Louis, Yasmin Gorenberg tells a story of the pain passed from refugee parents to their children and the hope that can overcome it. “40 Nickels” captures the image of a generation of immigrants to the United States in the 1920’s and 1930’s and through that spotlights the effects of the 1919 pogroms in Eastern Europe. This is a film about parents and children: how trauma never leaves a family, and how hope and resilience is also passed down. It asks the question: Can a new generation look at the world with wonder rather than fear?

The Great Yiddish Love(en)

Set in Berlin and New York's Lower East Side, The Great Yiddish Love stars the self-exiled Marlene Dietrich and her Nazi-endorsed replacement, Zarah Leander. It is a melodrama of love, emigration, and betrayal reassembled from Hollywood, German Ufa and Yiddish films from the 1930s and 40s.

The Man Without a World(en)

The Man Without a World is credited to the legendary (and imaginary) 1920s Soviet director, Yevgeny Antinov. But the film is anything but old. In fact, Antinov himself is the creation of contemporary filmmaker Eleanor Antin. Her film is a moving, comic melodrama set in a typical shtetl (village) in Poland. The Jews’ struggle against poverty and racial hatred is complicated by their own division into hostile political factions of the religious orthodoxy, assimilationists, socialists, Zionists, anarchists and survivors. While the Jews of the shtetl pursue their loves, politics, religion, business and dreams for the future, the Angel of Death is ever near...

Motel the Operator(yi)

Motel, a poor laborer, loving husband and new father, leads cloakmakers in a strike for better working conditions. When he is severely injured by strikebreakers, his wife, Esther, and infant son are left destitute. Desperate to save her starving child, Esther gives him up for adoption to a wealthy couple, and then commits suicide. The richly-rendered beautiful Yiddish songs by Sholem Secunda featuring Cantor Leibele Waldman and Joel Feig's famous choir are a good example of the bittersweet melodrama in the finest tradition of the Yiddish theater.

A Yiddish World Remembered(en)

Elliott Gould narrates this affectionate look at life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. "It's unreal that all this could have just disappeared," says Polish native Mariem Adler Stok, one of the seniors whose memories of this "Yiddish world" give this documentary its life. The hour traces Jewish history in Europe and explores Jews' focus on education, their religious customs, clothing, food, music and theater.

The Paper Brigade(fr)

Lithuania, 1941, during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of texts on Jewish culture, stolen by the Germans, are gathered in Vilnius to be classified, either to be stored or to be destroyed. A group of Jewish scholars and writers, commissioned by the invaders to carry out the sorting operations, but reluctant to collaborate and determined to save their legacy, hide many books in the ghetto where they are confined. This is the epic story of the Paper Brigade.

A bissele Glik(de)

A Little Family Conversation(fr)

The questioning of Jewish heritage and identity via the portrait of a diversed family, across Belgium and the United States.

Welcome to Yiddishland(en)

An upbeat, witty, and timely exploration of a global community of artists creating innovative work in their quest to rediscover and revitalise the endangered Yiddish language. From behind-the-scenes with an acclaimed Yiddish-language version of Yentl in Melbourne, to enjoyably transgressive punk-Klezmer musicians, and Barrie Kosky’s latest trailblazing production in Berlin – the endangered Yiddish language is alive and well in this rousing documentary. The language originated amongst the Jewish community in Eastern Europe, but almost disappeared when more than half of the world’s Yiddish speakers were murdered during the Holocaust. Most of the artists and performers (aka Yiddishists) in the film didn’t grow up speaking Yiddish, but all have found solace, identity, and inspiration in its rich traditions and culture. Ros Horin has mapped a fascinating cultural history.

Mabidi Wa Strata(en)

A charming yet mischievous man who navigates his community by scamming people and borrowing money. Despite his deceitful ways, Mabidi tries to maintain a semblance of normalcy at home, where he faces his no-nonsense wife, Maria.

Sandblock(en)

An old man, who has to carry a brick he soaked in the sea, struggles a bit while doing this.

The Lost Ones(ru)

Four colleagues went on a business trip to conclude an important agreement, curry favor with their superiors and earn a promotion, but on the way back everything did not go according to plan - the heroes find themselves without money and connections in a mysterious small town... More and more obstacles arise between them and returning home. What is keeping them there - an unfortunate combination of circumstances or the city itself?

Summer Will Come(ru)

An orphanage resident, Nikita, flees justice to Moscow, where he meets Den, a rich orphan who offers Nikita a ticket to a better life in exchange for his friendship. Nikita agrees, not knowing what price he will have to pay for it.

Coeval(ru)

An expelled journalism student, trying to make sense of his life, carefully documents his summer, as well as the story of the disappearance and death of the founders of one of the first startups on the Russian Internet.

A Northern Boy(fi)

1973. Simppa lives a simple life in a dilapidated shack with his adoptive father, Aapi, and his dog Peni. Kati, a young hippie from the city, brings a breath of fresh air into his life.

Why War(he)

In 1932, Albert Einstein was invited by the League of Nations to address a letter on any subject to any person. He chose to correspond with Sigmund Freud about avoiding war. To this day, the correspondence about war of two great thinkers of all time proves to be more relevant than ever. Inspired by this correspondence between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud almost a century ago, the film Why War traces the roots of war, and embarks on a search for an explanation of the savagery of wars that inhabit our world.