All of humankind is on show

Films present a wide array of characters and their complex stories.

The Vancouver Jewish Film Festival continues this weekend with a range of movies tackling controversial subjects: from tensions among religious communities to Israel's pull-out from Gaza last summer and the aftermath of a terrorist attack. Here is our round-up of some films to watch out for.

Challenging orthodoxy

A dynasty is defined as a family or group that maintains power for several generations. So after holding such power for so long, it makes sense that the successors of that power be loathe to relinquish it.

The Schwartz Dynasty takes a critical look at the decline of the Schwartz family in a small town in Israel . It's narrated by 20-something Avishai Schwartz, whose grandfather was the local cantor and head of the Orthodox council. The film looks at the struggle of Avishai's grandmother to bring honor back to their family, after her husband was accused of embezzlement and committed suicide. It also follows the plight of a gentile Russian girl named Anna, whose attempts to bury her Jewish father's ashes in the Jewish cemetery are denied – and her uncle, who owns a non-kosher butcher shop in town and is constantly harrassed by Orthodox youth. It's only at the end of the film that one of the pivotal Orthodox characters makes amends.

This is an entertaining, challenging movie, offering humor, romance and social commentary.

The Schwartz Dynasty is in Hebrew with English subtitles. It screens Saturday, April 1, at 8 p.m. at Fifth Avenue.

– Veronika Stewart

Removing settlements

10 Days in Gaza chronicles Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank last summer. Director Dov Gil-Har relies almost exclusively on footage that was aired daily on Israel's Channel 2 news to document the emotionally charged events of the pull-out. As such, the film is more of a play-by-play of the daily happenings over this significant period in Israeli history than a political or philosophical commentary.

We see all range of emotion – from the settlers, as well as the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and police charged with removing them. The settlers often exhibit rage at the fact that they are being forced to leave homes they built with their own hands. Seemingly miraculously, this anger does not erupt into any full-scale violence.

Despite the frustration and sorrow, there is an underlying understanding and mutual respect between the two sides that comes across in the footage. For example, one male settler says to the soldier evacuating him, "We are not your enemy, we are not your enemy ... we love you." The settler then hugs the soldier. Such embraces are repeated often throughout the film – most emotionally in an encounter where a young man is so distraught at the idea of leaving that he asks an IDF member to kill him. Instead, the soldier reaches out and takes the sobbing young man into his arms.

This image is indicative of the incredible compassion and patience shown by the IDF in what could only have been one of their most difficult missions; expelling the people they had been protecting for almost 40 years.

In the end, the film will leave viewers with a deeper understanding of this conflict.

10 Days in Gaza is in Hebrew with English subtitles. It plays at Vancity Theatre on April 1 at 8 p.m.

– Kelley Korbin

A dark, deranged tale

Borderline pornographic at times, Distortion is an exploration of the moral misgivings in an Israeli society constantly bombarded with terrorist attacks.

Distortion follows its main character, Chaim, a struggling playwright, on his quest to catch his journalist girlfriend cheating on him. With the help of Avi, a private detective, Chaim follows his girlfriend's every move, discovering her affair with the subject of one of her stories and translating his findings into a play. The movie also incorporates the storylines of a few other characters, including a homeless male prostitute and a suicide bomber.

With rapidly changing camera angles and sound levels, the film often throws its viewer into sensory overload. It offers little opportunity for empathy with the characters, who are all caught up in some kind of horrible vice – take your pick from cocaine, adultery, prostitution and prescription drugs.

For those less than comfortable with the sexually explicit and profane, this film is not recommended. It is also ridiculously slow moving, considering its length. When you want a movie to end, it hasn't been impressive enough to warrant it being so long. All in all, this film seems pretty deranged.

Distortion screens at Fifth Avenue on Saturday, April 1, at 10 p.m.

– Veronika Stewart

Terror close to home

When the staff and regular crowd at Mike's Place, an English-speaking bar in Jerusalem, started filming Blues by the Beach, there was no way they could have predicted the horrific twist the film would take.

Director Jack Baxter, a freelance journalist from New York, went to Israel in 2003 to make a documentary. After giving up on a previous idea to cover Palestinian activist Marwan Barghouti, Baxter is about to leave Israel when he discovers Mike's Place. It is there that he finds the subject for his documentary. Through the homey bar on the beach, with a live blues band and family of staff, Baxter begins with a look at the bar scene in Israel, which continues to thrive despite the constant threat of terrorism.

His story takes a turn for the worse, however, when the terrorism hits close to home, and key players in the documentary, including the director himself, are injured in a suicide bomber's attack.

The film offers an up-close and personal look at the lives of the bar crowd before and after the attack: how it affects their lives, their feelings about the bar and even their relationships. The characters are easy to relate to because they are real – and the viewer is able to sympathize with their reactions and see the changes they undergo because of the violence surrounding them.

Blues by the Beach screens at the Peretz Centre on Sunday, April 2, at 6 p.m.

– Veronika Stewart

The conscience of art

The Hungarian Servant offers a compelling portrait of August and Franziska Dailermann during their tenure as commandant and wife at a rural Nazi death camp. The film depicts the tensions that mount between husband and wife as they struggle to meet their citizenship obligations in the service of the Third Reich. August must orchestrate the "Final Solution" at his camp. Franziska must forsake her memories of frolicking and dancing in urbane Berlin and settle upon crafting a new home life built upon the culturally vacant ideology of the Reich.

However, through their passion for the arts, August and Franziska engage in some muted and short-lived civil disobedience. A camp prisoner – the "Hungarian servant" – brings in a series of artists to paint Franziska's portrait; each in a different style.

Told in flashback form, the film illustrates the remorse of the commandant years after the war, when he is obsessed with the artistry he witnessed. Ultimately, it reflects the subjugation of the emotive, the subjective and the expressive to the mechanistic, conforming society of the Third Reich. It is extraordinary for its many levels of meaning.

The Hungarian Servant is in Italian with English subtitles. It screens at the Norman Rothstein Theatre on Monday, April 3, at 7 p.m., followed by a panel discussion with Mark Wexler and Gabor Maté. A second screening is at Fifth Avenue on Tuesday, April 4, at 2 p.m.

– Tim Newman

A charming romance

All it takes is a little lie, and all heck breaks loose ... but so does love in the romantic comedy Like a Fish Out of Water.

More like a TV show than a movie – especially at only 56 minutes – Fish Out of Water doesn't break any new ground, but it's fun. The lead actors have genuine chemistry and all the actors have good timing. Director Leonid Prudovsky keeps the pace moving, which is a good thing, for the most part, but there is a bit of a train wreck at the end, where everything gets wrapped up a little too quickly and neatly.

The plot focuses on Marcello, a recent immigrant to Israel from Argentina. He is an unemployed actor who needs to improve his Hebrew accent so that he can win a part on an Israeli soap opera. His situation is all the more pressing because he is a single parent to his 11-year-old daughter, Lucy.

Anat is Marcello's Hebrew teacher. She is single and has made her mother promise to not set her up with any more men. Unfortunately, her mother doesn't listen that well, and Anat is forced to stave off the advances of Yariv, an intense and talkative soldier.

When she is confronted by Yariv outside of the Hebrew school, Marcello steps in to help her, much to her annoyance, and Yariv mistakenly thinks that the two are dating – and that Marcello is a religious Jew. Word immediately travels to Anat's mother, who's overjoyed by the news, and the "lies" (uncorrected assumptions, really) multiply.

Like a Fish Out of Water is in Hebrew and Spanish with English subtitles. It screens at the Norman Rothstein Theatre on Monday, April 3, at 9:45 p.m.

– Cynthia Ramsay

^TOP