Escape to cinema for week of VJFF

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

Travel the world. Meet interesting people. Learn something, or simply escape. All from the comfort of your seat at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas during the 25th annual Vancouver Jewish Film Festival.

The festival opens on Nov. 7, 7:30 p.m., with The Zigzag Kid. Based on a David Grossman novel, it is a charming, fun movie. The story centres on Nono, the son of “the best inspector” in Holland. Nono aspires to be as good a detective as his father and he soaks up everything that his father teaches him about surveillance, how to handcuff a suspect, etc. The one thing his father can’t bring himself to share with Nono, however, is what Nono really most wants to know: more about his mother, who died when he was only one year old.

While Gaby, his father’s “secretary,” understands that aspect of Nono, whose bar mitzvah is impending, his father seems oblivious. But then, as Nono is on the train to his uncle’s – punishment for yet another exploit that went perfectly as planned in Nono’s head, but not so much in reality – he finds a letter hidden within the wrapper of his chocolate bar. Ostensibly from his father, it sends Nono on a mission that connects him to his father’s nemesis, the great criminal Felix Glick, from whom Nono hopes not only to learn how to become the best detective, but also to find out more about his mother. With only a photo to go on, Nono and Glick travel to the French Riviera, engaging in many an adventure, including Nono’s introduction to, not-so-coincidentally, Gaby’s favorite singer, Lola Ciperola, who Glick just happens to know.

Director Vincent Bal keeps things light and moving along, all in a colorful, stylized fashion, while not shying away from the story’s serious themes, good versus evil, knowing oneself, and the importance of family among them. The cast includes a wonderful debut performance by Thomas Simon as Nono, as well as strong performances by a very likable Jessica Zeylmaker as Gaby, Fedja van Huêt as the perfect TV-type cop/Nono’s dad, Burghart Klaussner as the grandfatherly master criminal/teacher and veteran actress Isabella Rossellini as Lola; Camille De Pazzis as a seductive, temperamental mystery woman rounds out the lead roles.

The Zigzag Kid – in Dutch, English and French with English subtitles – is recommended for viewers 8 and up. To see the trailer for the multiple-award-winning film, visit menemshafilms.com/zigzag-kid.

The next film on the VJFF lineup is Oma & Bella, on Nov. 8, 1 p.m. A documentary, Oma & Bella is perhaps unexpectedly remarkable. Oma is Regina Karolinski, filmmaker Alexa Karolinski’s grandmother, and Bella Katz is Oma’s best friend. Bella has moved in temporarily with Oma, who has had a hip replacement, but the two interact and move in Oma’s small apartment with the ease of people who have known each other for a very long time and still enjoy each other’s company, even if it’s just silently cooking a meal together.

The documentary mostly takes place in the kitchen, where the audience witnesses these two feisty women cooking up a storm of traditional Jewish (non-vegetarian) food. However, among other places, we also join them on a trip to the market, an appointment at the hairdresser and a visit to the cemetery, where many of the people they knew have been buried. Holocaust survivors, Oma and Bella share with Alexa, and the audience, not only some of the happy memories, but also some of the absolutely horrific memories, of their childhoods in Germany, where they still live.

Simply filmed, without any bells and whistles, Oma & Bella successfully communicates the deep friendship between these women and their determination to enjoy life despite its hardships. We get to meet some of the family that they have built, and to be a part of their table. Food plays a large part in their lives and the film, and viewers can actually buy The Oma & Bella Cookbook and see a trailer for the documentary, which is in German with English subtitles, at omabella.com.

The American documentary The Real Inglorious Bastards (Nov. 10, 2:30 p.m., with director Min Sook Lee in attendance) tells the story of Operation Greenup, one of the most successful missions by the U.S. government’s Office of Strategic Services in the Second World War. The operation comprised only three operatives, two Jewish refugees who enlisted in the U.S. army, Hans Wijnberg (whose parents sent him to America from Holland to escape the Nazis) and Fred Mayer (whose family fled Germany as the war was beginning), and a Wehrmacht officer who deserted, prisoner-of-war Franz Weber. The three parachuted into the Austrian Alps, and then headed to Weber’s hometown, where his sisters and mother helped the trio monitor Nazi movements and pass along that information to the Allies.

The Real Inglorious Bastards features interviews with Mayer and Wijnberg, who died one day after his interview; Weber had already passed away, but his son is interviewed. The film includes reenactments, archival footage and photographs, and historian commentary to make for an intriguing 51-minute look into this dangerous mission, one part of which resulted in the Allies taking over Innsbruck without a shot being fired. For more information about the film, visit realinglorious.com.

Another documentary featured at VJFF is Two Sided Story (Nov. 10, 6:45 p.m., with guest Tehila Lieberman, Parents Circle member). In summer 2011, director Tor Ben Mayor filmed a group of Palestinians and Israelis meeting under the aegis of a Parents Circle Families Forum-led project called History Through the Human Eye, the goal of which is for each side of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to listen to, and hopefully acknowledge, the narrative of the other. There are many different participants who vary in their openness, and the film captures this range of beliefs and emotions as it follows various conversations between the participants.

According to the Palestinian Israeli Bereaved Families for Peace website, Two Sided Story is Ben Mayor’s third about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Describing it as “open[ing] up conversation about reaching reconciliation,” Ben Mayor also says about the project, “There was something about that encounter which made, in my eyes, the whole difference; it was the equal possibility for each side to express his pain, knowing that this time somebody from the other side really listened.”

The dialogue is in Arabic, Hebrew and English, with English subtitles. To read more about the documentary and to learn more about Bereaved Families for Peace, visit theparentscircle.com.

The Escape (Ha’bricha) (Nov. 11, 3:45 p.m.), directed by Meni Elias, follows a group of Israeli teens as they travel from Kielce, Poland, to La Spezia, Italy, following the route that many displaced persons took to get to Palestine after the war. In Kielce, the teens learn of the pogrom in 1946 that resulted in 42 murdered Jews. The group visits the site of a DP camp in Trofaiach, Austria, and that of the Ebensee concentration camp, they go to Salzburg and what was the Saalfelden DP camp, before hiking to the Italian border and then visiting Magenta, Italy, where the escapees learned farming and other skills they would need in Palestine, before ending in La Spezia, where escapees were smuggled by boat to freedom.

The history of the Bricha movement is fascinating. As well, the teens engage in interesting discussions with each other about their experiences in Israel with racism, some of them being from immigrant communities themselves, as well as their views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The group also meets several people on their journey who lived in Austria at the time the Jews were fleeing, and it is eye-opening to hear what some of them have to say for themselves, and how the teens relate to them. For the film trailer, visit ruthfilms.com/films/new-releases/the-escape.html.

For something completely different, there’s the French comedy What’s in a Name? (Le Prénom), on Nov, 10, 9:15 p.m. The action takes place in the apartment of Elisabeth/“Babou” (Valérie Benguigui) and Pierre (Charles Berling), as they host her brother, Vincent (Patrick Bruel), a not-always funny jokester; family friend Claude, who has a secret that will be revealed during the evening; and Vincent’s pregnant wife Anna (Judith El Zein), who is late for dinner. By the time she arrives, tempers are already in mid-flare over Vincent’s earlier proclamation that he and his wife are going to name their child Adolphe/Adolf. While not an hilarious farce, there are many humorous moments in this comedy and the conversation raises some valid and interesting points, not only about the appropriateness of certain names, but also of certain relationships, and how family and friends should treat each other.

On the topic of French movies, My Best Holidays (Nos plus belles vacances) has two showtimes at VJFF: Nov. 12, 3:45 p.m., and Nov. 14, 9:15 p.m. Set during the drought of summer 1976 in a small village whose residents are suffering as a result, Claude (Phillippe Lellouche) and Isabelle (Julie Gayet) have brought their family – their two young sons, Simon (Edwyn Penot) and Bibou (Solal Lellouche), and Isabelle’s mother, Mamie (Nicole Calfan) – back to her birthplace in Bretagne. Isabelle has chosen it as a place to regroup after having caught Claude in an affair. The family is met there by friends, two couples with whom they often vacation, it seems. The villagers initially react quite negatively to Claude, an Algerian Jew, but as the positive stereotype of Jews being good businesspeople proves true, with the advice Claude provides saving them from financial ruin, the negative stereotypes fall to the side. Amid the parents’ trials and tribulations are revelations about Mamie’s wartime actions, as well as her finding love late in life, and Simon finding his first love.

Du vent dans mes mollets (The Dandelions) also has nostalgic elements, set in the 1980s, and centred around a precocious, but very cute, nine-year-old, Rachel (Juliette Gombert). Carine Tardieu adapted the film with the novel’s author, Raphaële Moussafir, and, creatively put together, the story is amusing, touching and sad.

Rachel is a smart, under-challenged child, whose parents (played by Denis Podalydes and Agnès Jaoui) have become distant from each other; the father barely interacts with either his wife or daughter, and her mother focuses all of her (suffocating) love on her daughter. Into this unhappy mix has entered Rachel’s dying grandmother (Judith Magre), with whom Rachel must share a room, adding a morbid touch to Rachel’s imaginings, which are expanded upon in her sessions with a child psychiatrist (Isabella Rossellini). The family gets a much-needed energy boost and new perspective when Rachel befriends the quirky outcast Valérie (Anna Lemarchand) at school, and Valérie’s mother, Catherine (Isabelle Carré), attracts the attention of Rachel’s father.

The acting is excellent overall, and Gombert really is one of the cutest kids, a delight to watch. The story keeps viewers guessing as to what kind of trouble Rachel and Valérie will get into next, and whether Rachel’s father will have an affair with Catherine. The costumes, settings and scenery, as well as Rachel’s imaginings, are stylish and evocative of the time and places. The Dandelions is definitely worth seeing on Nov. 12, 9:15 p.m.

For the full festival schedule and ticket information, visit vjff.org.

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