Gold for Fools

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...

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.

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.

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?

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.

In this multiverse comedy about Alzheimer's, Nellie travels through alternate dimensions in search of her husband.

In one continuous shot, SHTTL shows the lives, loves, and inner conflicts within a Yiddish speaking shtetl on the border between Ukraine and Poland - one day before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

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.

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.

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.

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

A bissele Glik

Fun-loving Miri is a genius with numbers. She puts this talent to good use in her job at the town bank in the small village of Hattenstein, where she actively helps her often overburdened boss. When a local winegrower is found dead in a wooded area, she also develops a penchant for detective work. The policeman Nils, one of her old schoolmates, believes it was a sudden heart attack. But Miri's extraordinary powers of deduction tell her that there is something fishy about the case. With the moral support of her ownerless dachshund, Frauchen, she uncovers a large-scale crime in which even the mayor of the town seems to be involved.

In 1852, the young Austrian emperor Franz Joseph persuades his friend, Count Michel de Thalberg, to act as a go-between in his love affair with the Bavarian duchess Elisabeth. Not long after his arrival in Munch, Thalberg has an embarrassing encounter in a public garden with an attractive young woman. The innocent incident is misinterpreted by a passer-by who, recognising the woman as the youngest daughter of Ludwig Tomasini, a highly respected caterer, persuades her father that she should marry the man who flirted with her to avoid a scandal (FilmsdeFrance).

A semi-autobiographical one-man theater show, Klass Klown (later renamed Ghetto Klown), based on his memoir Pimps, Hos, Playa Hatas, and All the Rest of My Hollywood Friends: My Life.

A football team who has differences and ego problems must win an International underground football tournament in order to save their own lives.

Dekh Tamasha Dekh is a political and social satire based on a true story, it revolves around the search for the religious identity of a poor man crushed under the weight of a politician`s hoarding.

Laddu Babu is the story of a fat man, who tries to find a partner for marriage!

The captain of the Prague shipping company, Adam Korkorán, lives his dreams of commanding ocean liners, even though in reality he only sails a small steamer on the Vltava River. The company's management still has problems with him, so when Korkorán refuses to retire, they at least send him to a spa. However, at the train station in Poděbrady, a servant from the most expensive spa hotel accidentally takes away his suitcase with the luggage of a rich lady. As a result, Korkorán is mistaken for a corvette captain and a rich man. Dazzled by the luxury, Korkorán befriends a retired admiral and begins to play a game with the spa guests and himself. He is even declared the most popular guest of the season. When he runs out of money, he writes to his housekeeper to send him all his savings. The horrified woman decides to go to Korkorán, and the truth comes out...