One of the great joys of the UK Jewish Film Festival is the chance it gives Jewish film fans to meet. Like family gatherings, there’s a cosy fellow feeling with members of the audience, and it’s rare to attend without bumping into a friend.
But this year it’s all different. Just like other film festivals this year, the UK Jewish Film Festival organisers have opted for a completely virtual experience. That’s a shame -— but the plus side is that more people can access films, without having to compete for tickets or schlep across town.
With this in mind, I’ve been dipping into the programme, looking for the variety and diversity which the festival is famed for. Here are four female-orientated films worth your attention.
Asia
★★★★✩
One of the festival’s gems is Ruthy Pribar’s Asia, a deftly executed slow burner in which a 35-year-old Russian immigrant to Israel, geriatric nurse and single mother struggles to cope with her parental responsibilities to her 17-year-old daughter.
Having become a mother at an early age, Asia (Alena Yiv, from Heroine) finds it hard to relate to her rebellious teenage offspring, Vika (a gorgeous turn from Unorthodox star Shira Haas). Their mundane life and precarious relationship is however strengthened when Vika is suddenly diagnosed with a life-limiting degenerative disease. Meanwhile, Asia’s illicit affair with a married colleague hits a snag as she struggles to carry the burden of a sick child on her own and without a soulmate to share her life.
As Vika’s health continues to deteriorate, the film’s narrative shifts from stripped-down social drama into classic sick-lit territory — think The Fault in Our Stars — and culminates in a heartbreaking denouement.
With its sparse dialogue and long intimate takes, the film beautifully mixes melodrama and social realism. There are hints of Mike Leigh’s meticulous observational style in the depiction of Asia’s day job as geriatric nurse, even if the touching relationship between Vika and her handsome young carer Gabi (Tamir Mula) sometimes topples into slightly more contrived sentimentalism. Nevertheless, Pribar has given us a grown-up and gorgeously acted family drama which more than deserves all its accolades.
Golda
★★★✩✩
One highlight this year is an engaging feature-length documentary charting the life of controversial former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. The centrepiece of Golda is an off-the-record conversation with Meir, filmed just after a televised interview which took place shortly before her death in 1978. Chain-smoking throughout — one of her trademarks — the archived Meir talks candidly about her five years in office (1969–74), revealing that she barely ever slept during that time and would often demand to be woken during the night if anything happened, no matter how minor.
The film’s three directors, Sagi Bornstein, Udi Nir and Shani Rozanes here provide coverage of some of Meir’s biggest controversies. They scrutinise her fraught relationship with Israel’s Black Panthers — a group of Mizrahi settlers who felt mistreated by her government — and the mistakes made during the Yom Kippur war of 1973.
Unfortunately, Golda glosses over Meir’s early formative years in the United States, and also fails to delve into her earlier socialist beliefs which she later all but abandoned, according to her detractors.
Nonetheless, there are some undeniably revealing interviews with family members, close friends and former government officials to help fill in the gaps. In short, it’s a special insight into the woman who was known by many as the queen of the Jews.
A Call to Spy
★★✩✩✩
A Call to Spy is director Lydia Dean Pilcher’s highly anticipated historical biopic about female agents during World War II. In 1940, when France had fallen and Britain stood alone against Hitler’s forces, the newly formed Special Operations Executive (SOE) was desperate to find new ways of combating the occupying Nazi forces, and so began to recruit women as spies to send to France. A Call to Spy relates the story of two of those spies, notably the American, Virginia Hall (played by the film’s screenwriter, Sarah Megan Thomas) and the Muslim pacifist Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte). Stana Katic (from TV’s Castle) co-stars as their recruiter, the legendary Jewish-Romanian spymistress Vera Atkins.
It’s an important and fascinating story, involving a wealth of information and impressively meticulous research, but the telling of that story is somewhat by-numbers, and the performances are rather stunted and stagey.
Ultimately, this is a film with big ideas but a modest budget, and sadly that is its biggest downfall.
Honeymood ★★★✩✩
Closing this year’s festival in style is Honeymood, a charmingly whimsical offering from Israeli writer-director Talya Lavie. It’s the follow-up to her universally well received debut feature Zero Motivation, and tells the story of a couple of newlyweds who fall out on their wedding night. Arriving at a deluxe hotel suite in Jerusalem after their wedding, Noam (Ran Danker) and Eleanor (Avigail Harari) expect one of the most memorable nights of their lives. But things become complicated when some home truths are told, and trust has seemingly been broken.
Next, the couple find themselves wandering the streets of Jerusalem in a series of bizarre and unexpected encounters with strangers, ex-partners and the groom’s disapproving parents.
Meanwhile Noam must come to terms with the possible failure of his marriage before it has even begun, while free spirt Eleanor has no qualms about re-opening old wounds.
Honeymood is by no means perfect, nor is it a patch on her debut feature, but Lavie has given us here a thought-provoking and funny comedy of errors.
The film’s main strength, however, lies in the two fantastic central performances from Danker and Harari. Granted, the gags don’t always come to fruition and the allegory is laid on a little too thickly in parts, but Lavie has proven that she isn’t a flash in the pan, but here to stay.
The UK Jewish Film Festival runs until November 19. Tickets for virtual screenings can be found here: ukjewishfilm.org/festival/
