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Film Fests & Special Screenings Movies & TV

What’s nu at the Jewish Film fest


THE TORONTO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL at various locations from Thursday (May 5) to May 15. tjff.com. Rating: NNNN


Creeping up on its silver anniversary, the Toronto Jewish Film Festival continues to stuff as much culture and commentary as it can into its week and a half of screenings. 

TJFF 24 opens Thursday (May 5, 7 pm, Varsity) with the premiere of author and filmmaker David Bezmozgis’s Natasha (see Q&A) and spends the next 10 days spreading out over the city, screening relevant programming from all over the world. 

If you missed their TIFF premieres last September, you can catch up with Natalie Portman’s directorial debut, A Tale Of Love And Darkness (May 11, 8 pm, Empress Walk 6), an adaptation of Amos Oz’s memoir about growing up during Israel’s formative years P.S. Jerusalem (May 6, 3:30 pm, Alliance Française May 8, 5:30 pm, Empress Walk 6), Danae Elon’s documentary about her return to -Israel after decades away and Marcin Wrona’s Demon (May 7, 9:30 pm, Canada Square 3 May 9, 8:45 pm, Bloor Hot Docs), a psychological thriller about a Polish man possessed by an unquiet spirit at his own wedding.

In By Sidney Lumet (May 7, 9 pm, Alliance Française May 11, 5:30 pm, Empress Walk 6), screened at Cannes, documentarian Nancy Buirski uses a wide-ranging interview recorded three years before Lumet’s 2011 death to let the storied American filmmaker explore his body of work.

Oh, and one of Lumet’s contemporaries, local legend Norman Jewison, turns up in the flesh as part of a salute to Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster (May 7, 1 pm, ROM). He’ll be part of a panel discussing the beloved duo’s legacy following a screening of three episodes of Wayne & Shuster In Black And White and a vintage Telescope documentary that followed the pair to England in 1965 (also May 10, 12:30 pm, at Innis Town Hall). There’ll be a free screening of the duo’s 1988 fairy-tale spoof Once Upon A Giant at 11 am on May 14 at Innis Town Hall.

Mark Rappaport’s I, Dalio – Or The Rules Of The Game (May 8, 8 pm, Alliance Française May 11, 4 pm, Empress Walk 9) runs just half an hour, but as with most of the director’s socio-historical essay films, there’s a lot to unpack. 

Rappaport looks at actor Marcel Dalio, who built a career in France catering to the prevailing Jewish stereotype of shifty, morally ambivalent schemers, and then went to Hollywood, where he found work playing stereotypical Frenchmen. It’s screening with Lyndy Saville’s Discovering Edward G. Robinson, about another Jewish actor who reinvented himself as a -different kind of stereotype: the pulp-movie tough guy.

The festival is also celebrating the life and career of Israeli actor and filmmaker Ronit Elkabetz, whose death shocked the global film community last month, with a free screening of Nir Bergman’s 2010 documentary about her, A Stranger In Paris (May 12, 1 pm, Innis Town Hall). That’ll be worth your time.

normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner

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