Open-Air Cinema 2024 at Fraenkelufer Synagogue
Blurred Boundaries: Reflections on Jewish Self-Discovery
Welcome to our fourth annual open-air cinema in the garden of the Fraenkelufer Synagogue! This year, our film series is overshadowed by the shattering events in the Middle East and their direct impact on our lives here and around the world. All the more reason we are looking forward to opening the synagogue garden to the neighborhood again this summer and welcoming many guests.
Starting August 22nd, Jewish Moving Pictures e.V. and Fraenkelufer Synagogue cordially invite you over three Thursday evenings to enjoy inspiring films and hear exciting discussions focusing on current topics of Jewish life. Our 2024 program is bound together by the unifying theme of self-reflection and rites of passage in the context of Jewish life.
Our first event is a short film evening focusing on the motto: “To Everything There is a Season and a Time to Every Purpose.” Separation, transition, and return are integral parts of our lives. There are moments and events that we carry with us as long as we are alive. In these films, childhood (“Susam,” “Women of Virtue”), love relationships (“Arava”), offspring, and immigration (“Cherry Bones”) are entangled with religions, traditions, and restrictions.
Our second evening is dedicated to the question of borders. “Tel Aviv Beirut” is one of the only feature films that deal with the activities of the South Lebanon Army and the crisis of identity of its people over the course of two decades. Focusing on wives, mothers, and daughters, it shows that even in the midst of war and terror and despite different backgrounds, people can come together.
We will close this year’s program with the screening of the Utopian Orthodox road movie “No Name Restaurant,” in which actors Luzer Twerski (who was brought up in the ultra-Orthodox community of Brooklyn) and Haitham Omari (a Muslim-Israeli from East Jerusalem), in their roles as Ben and Adel, show us that a simple human encounter in the endless desert might bring the light at the end of the tunnel.
We invite our audiences to reflect on their lives and on the changing world around us. After each screening, we will hold a discussion with the filmmakers.
We would like to thank the Szloma-Albam-Foundation, the district office of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, the Berliner Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung, and the Jewish Community of Berlin for their support.
22.08.24
To Everything There Is A Season And A Time To Every Purpose – Short films evening
No ticket or registration required!
Admission: 19:30, Film: 20:00
A Night of Short Films
Women of Virtue
Dir: Stephanie Halfon, France, 2022
Languages: French with English subtitles
Etel, a 9-year-old girl who lives in the Hasidic community in Paris, gets her period for the first time. Myriam, her mother, finally looks at her as if she were a woman. Etel is blessed, until she finds out that in her religion, women are considered impure when they are menstrating.
Susam
Dir: Sami Morhaym, Turkey, 2021
Languages: Turkish with English subtitles
A Turkish-Jewish family faces a series of dilemmas on the morning of Susam’s Bar-mitzvah ceremony with the limitations of Shabbat day rules when Susam locks himself in his room and does not get out for his ceremony.
Arava
Dir: Sarah Benyamin, Israel, 2023
Languages: Hebrew with English subtitles
In 2000s Jerusalem, Arava reluctantly goes on a trip with her best friend, Tzipi. Along the way they’re confronted with the intricacies of their individual identities: hopes, losses, and their relationships to one another.
Cherry Bone
Dir: Evgenia Gostrer, Germany, 2021
Languages: German and Russian with English and German subtitles
In her documentary animated film Cherry Bone, the filmmaker tells the story of her family, who came to Germany from the former Soviet Union in the mid-1990s as so-called "Jewish quota refugees" from a very personal perspective. The director enters into a dialogue with her parents that would not be possible in real life and offers an insight into much more than a particular immigration and family history. (AG short film)
Guest speakers: directors Evgenia Gostrer, Sami Morhaym
Moderator: Dr. Nir Ferber - Programmer Doc Aviv, Jewish Moving Pictures e.V.
(In English)
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29.08.24
The Question of Borders
Film: Tel Aviv – Beirut
Dir. Michale Boganim, Germany, France, 2022
Languages: English, French, Hebrew, Arabic with German subtitles
Between 1984 and 2006, the paths of an Israeli and a Lebanese family crossed during the armed conflict between the two countries. A complex familial war drama told in long flashbacks, in the final chapter of which an Israeli and a Lebanese woman fight together against impending disaster. The stirring epic revolves around flight and expulsion and focuses primarily on the disastrous consequences of war on family structures and social cohesion. Filmdienst.de
Guest speaker: director Michale Boganim
Moderator: Dr. Lihi Nagler - Jewish Moving Pictures e.V.
(In English)
No ticket or registration required!
Admission: 19:30, Film: 20:00
Film Program 2024
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18.09.24
An Utopic Orthodox Roadmovie
No ticket or registration required!
Admission: 19:00, Film: 19:30
Film: No Name Restaurant
Dir: Stefan Sarazin, Peter Keller, Germany, 2022
Languages: English, Hebrew and Arabic with German subtitles
A once large Jewish community is in crisis: it lacks the 10th believer to celebrate Passover. In order to avoid his family's attempts at matchmaking, Ben not entirely unselfishly offers to fly to Alexandria and help the vulnerable community out of it’s trouble. The trip doesn't go smoothly, and begins going wrong when Ben first misses his plane and then is thrown off the bus in the middle of the Sinai Desert. Here he is found by the grumpy and taciturn Bedouin Adel, who becomes the last hope of the ultra-Orthodox Ben. (Filmstarts.de)
Guest speaker: Director Peter Keller
Moderator: Petra Palmer - Co-Manager Woche der Kritik, Program Advisor IFFMH
(In German)
📸 Photo note: Photos and film clips will be taken at the event for our press and public relations work. If you do not want to be photographed and shown, please do not sit in the first two rows and let our photographer or someone from the organization team know. Thank you for your support!
Many thanks to our sponsors:
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