Film & TV

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Maestro ★★★★

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Maestro ★★★★

Much of the film Maestro is shot in black and white, but it opens in full colour. “I miss her terribly,” the older Leonard Bernstein says, of his late wife Felicia. At the piano he plays 'Postlude' (adeptly performed by Bradley Cooper), from his opera A Quiet Place, where the son mourns the loss…

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UKJFF 2023: Vishniac ★★★★★

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UKJFF 2023: Vishniac ★★★★★

In Berlin in 1933, seven-year-old Mara stands outside a shop once owned by a Jew. Now it sells instruments to gauge the shape of a skull, issuing certificates of 'Aryanism' if deemed appropriate. The photographer recording this moment was also a Jew; if apprehended by Nazi forces…

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UKJFF 2023: Less Than Kosher ★★★

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UKJFF 2023: Less Than Kosher ★★★

Daniel AM Rosenberg’s musical comedy Less Than Kosher follows self-proclaimed “bad Jew” Viv, a washed-up singer at 30. She finds herself deliriously hungover after Yom Kippur, but after a trip to her family’s synagogue manages to fall “ass-first” into a job as a substitute cantor. What…

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UKJFF 2023: Queen of the Deuce ★★★★

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UKJFF 2023: Queen of the Deuce ★★★★

When someone speaks of the American Dream, the image is usually of a well-to-do white-collared individual returning to their picket-fenced home where a doting spouse tends to two pristine children. Not, heaven forbid, a chain-smoking elderly Greek Jewish immigrant holding court with…

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Oppenheimer ★★★

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Oppenheimer ★★★

Christopher Nolan’s new film Oppenheimer, filmed on 70mm especially for IMAX, is two movies in one, or perhaps even three, which explains the excessive length. The first part is the weakest, telling the story of J Robert Oppenheimer’s background as a physicist in the 1920s…

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UKJFF 2022: Cinema Sabaya ★★★★

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UKJFF 2022: Cinema Sabaya ★★★★

Watching Orit Fouks Rotem’s uplifting Cinema Sabaya in the week in which Israel elected Benjamin Netanyahu back into power – with the help of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s extreme far-right party – was a bittersweet experience. The film takes place in the working-class city of Hadera in northern…

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UKJFF 2022: Reckonings ★★★★

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UKJFF 2022: Reckonings ★★★★

This year is the 70th anniversary of the signing in 1952 of the hugely significant but little-remembered Luxembourg Agreements between Israel and Germany. To mark the anniversary, this hard-hitting yet even-handed – and deeply compelling – documentary provides vivid insights into…