Jewish Film Festival Previews: Part 1

There’s little more than two weeks before this year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Do you know you what you want to see? Here are five films that will play in the festival, and only one of them you’ve likely have seen.

[[I made a major mistake when I posted this article. I did not give you the URL for Part I. Here it is.]]

I usually list films from best to worst. But for this festival, I’m listing them by the calendar, from opening to closing.

A- Remembering Gene Wilder, Opening Night! Castro, (2023), Thursday July 20, 6:30pm

Five years ago, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival opened with a documentary about Gilda Radner. This year, it starts with a doc about her late husband – Gene Wilder. Along with telling us Wilder’s life story, director Ron Frank gives us plenty of hilarious clips from Wilder’s work. Here you can see scenes from The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein and even Bonnie and Clyde. There’s also the story of how Wilder and Mel Brooks came together.

A- Israelism (2023)
֍ Vogue, Thursday July 27, 5:45pm
֍ Piedmont, Sunday August, 6, 2:00pm


The documentary starts like a commercial for Israel, but then reality soon takes over. There’s the army veteran who discovered he’s lost his humanity. There’s the young, American activist. There’s the Palestinian tour guide who will show you things you won’t see on a Birthright tour. Soldiers break into homes without warrants. Jeremy Ben Ami, Noam Chomsky, and Cornel West tell the filmmakers what they think. But it’s mostly young adults who tell their stories. This documentary shows how right-wing Americans, raised to love Israel, attack those who refuse to believe that an Arab is human.

B Not Quite Kosher (2022), also named No Name Restaurant), Vogue, Thursday July 27,, 8:45pm

A young American Chassid takes on an important journey: He must travel to Alexandria, Egypt before Passover within four days or something bad will happen. Things go wrong in the desert and he is saved by a kindly Bedouin. As the two men struggle in the wilderness, they get to know each other and their worlds. Unfortunately, the end of the movie turns out to be an advertisement for No Name Restaurants.

B+ Rabbi on the Block (2023), Vogue, Saturday July 29, 2:25pm

In 2020, I saw and reviewed a documentary about Tamar Manasseh, an African American Jew who has taken over a Chicago block and created a safe place to meet, learn, and celebrate holidays. She’s now fighting against senseless violence (there’s a lot in the neighborhood). In this sequel, she’s fighting to become a rabbi (as a black woman), with the help of the leader of a multi-racial synagogue. The film reminds us that Jews have been reading Torah long before Ashkenazis came to the American continent. But Manasseh is a strong woman.

B+ The Prince of Egypt, Castro (1998), Sunday, July 30, 2:20pm

It’s impossible to discuss this animated version of the Exodus story without comparing it to DeMille’sThe Ten Commandments, but they take very different approaches to the tale. DeMille’s version of the Moses story is a four-hour mix of wonderful spectacle and unintentionally hilarious piety, washed down with the silliest of melodrama. But Prince of Egypt takes the story seriously and treats the characters as complex human beings, and thus creates true drama. For this Jew at least, this version is a real, spiritual experience.

I’ll be writing more before and during the festival.