2024 Jewish Film Festival continues with six diverse, impressive films

The 2024 Jewish Film Festival continues in its second week, April 14, 16, and 18. Fulfilling their mission to showcase “national and international cinema that explores universal issues through traditional Jewish values, opposing viewpoints and new perspectives,” the concluding six films achieve that goal. Here are highlights from the three I screened.

Sunday, April 14, at 7:00 p.m. French director Philippe Le Guay’s “The Story of Annette Zelman” dramatizes the true story of that young Jewish woman in a loving, devoted relationship with Catholic Jean Jausion. Adapted from Laurent Joly’s 2017 book, “Informing on Jews during the Occupation,” set in 1942 Nazi-occupied Paris, Jausion’s parents, especially her father, express their anti-Semitic prejudice with tragic results. Annette and Jean have a vibrant, uplifting energy despite the dire situation.

Tuesday, April 16, at 7:00, Spanish director Rodrigo Cortéz’s “Love Gets a Room” is less successful though it makes an important statement about pervasive perils in the 1942 Warsaw Ghetto. Unfolding in real time, the reliance on the Jewish actors’ repetitive, frantic rushing about during a musical drama’s performance for a Jewish audience too often overshadows the Nazi threats just outside, and soon inside, the theater. Based on real events, it foregrounds the staggering life or death decision of who should or would escape to safety as well as what resistance and defiance will invite.

Thursday, April 18, at 7:00, Italian director Giuseppe Piccioni’s powerful “The Shadow of the Day” concludes the festival on a high note. Restraint, sidelong glances, and subterfuge dominate the small Italian town restaurant where Anna secures a waitress job, her WWI veteran employer initially unaware of her Jewish heritage, attracted to her, and resistant to Fascist dictates. No spoilers here, so suffice it to say that the situation spirals into serious confrontations through unexpected developments. The suspenseful concentration on several well-acted characters highly recommends this drama.

Not available for screening, the first film April 18, 3:30 p.m., is “Vishniac,” director Laura Bialis’ documentary on the iconic Russian-American photographer Roman Vishniac. To raise money for Eastern European Jewish communities, he recorded life there from 1935 through 1938, post-war Berlin, and, later, superb scientific photography. For more information on these and other films in the Jewish Film Festival, you may go to the Jewish Film Festival website. All films have English subtitles as needed, and all programs screen at the B&B Creve Coeur Theater.