Our Year-Round, virtual programming will include films and speakers each month (excluding March when our Virtual Festival will take place). Our upcoming line-up includes:

• January: Exodus 91 reveals the behind-the-scenes, true story of the massive 1991 airlift, Operation Solomon, that brought thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Also in January, a 60-minute documentary of the early career of Ethiopian-Israeli actor/dancer Tzivka Iskias along with an interview with him.

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• February: Breaking Bread: Hummus Has No Borders is a treat for the senses. This documentary explores the A-Sham Festival, a groundbreaking food festival where Arab and Jewish chefs work in tandem to create mouthwatering dishes in order to foster social change. The delectable showcase of culinary heritage gives hope to the idea that collaboration in the kitchen could be a bridge to mutual understanding and, perhaps, a first step toward a lasting peace. Also in February, a conversation with Greg Laemmle. 

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• April: Around the World with Fred goes to WWII Norway to dig deep into the back story of Betrayed, examining the history of the country’s Jewish community, both before, during and after WWII. Based on a true story, this haunting WWII saga follows the Braude family’s struggle as the life they knew and loved in Norway was ripped from them. Along with hundreds of other Norwegian Jews, they were rounded up and sent to work camps or in November 1942 to Auschwitz. Betrayed also presents an indictment of the Norwegian government and police in aiding the persecution of the country’s Jewish citizens. 

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• May: The Dove Flyer with journalist Avi Shilon. From 1950 to 1951, one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world ceased to exist. During that period, close to 130,000 Jews left Iraq for Israel, following a surge in antisemitism. This powerfully moving drama, based on a book by the same name, follows teenager Kabi in Baghdad, as he joins a Zionist underground group after his uncle his imprisoned by authorities. The Dove Flyer paints a complex portrait of an ancient and vibrant community that embraced the surrounding culture but at the same time feared for its safety.

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• June: In Cinema at War (Part II), EBIJFF Director Riva Gambert examines how Nazi Germany used its film industry to propagandize before and during WWII. Plus the hard-to-believe documentary Speer Goes to Hollywood. There is certainly no “hero” in this mesmerizing documentary, as the main protagonist is Albert Speer, an architect, a good friend of Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Germany’s Minister of Armaments and War Production. In 1971, Speer is approached by Paramount Studios, which wants to adapt his memoir for the screen. This film is based on more than 40 hours of revealing conversations between a studio screenwriter and Speer, during which the war criminal whitewashes his involvement in Nazi atrocities and maintains that he knew nothing of the Holocaust. Eventually, the movie was not made. Speer Goes to Hollywood premiered at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival and won major international awards. 

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• Summer 2023: Another of our popular Around the World with Fred events and a discussion about banned books that were made into films.

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