Many of Australia's annual cinema showcases focus on one particular country; however, that definitely isn't the Jewish International Film Festival's remit. Surveying the past year in movies with ties to Jewish culture, it fills its program with flicks from around the globe — in 2022, when it returns to Brisbane cinemas, with a lineup of 31 feature films, 25 documentaries, six short films and even episodes from episodes a TV series, in fact.
That selection will hit New Farm Cinemas Thursday, March 10–Sunday, March 20 and, and it clearly isn't short on highlights. That obviously includes its bookending titles, with the event opening with Simone Veil: A Woman of the Century and paying tribute to the French feminist icon, then closing with period melodrama Beauty Queen of Jerusalem from Israel.
Other standouts and must-sees include The Painted Bird, as based on Jerzy Kosinski's novel and featuring Harvey Keitel and Stellan Skarsgård among the cast; the Cannes-premiering A Radiant Girl, which steps back to the Occupation in Paris in World War II; and Haute Couture, which dives into French fashion.
Or, there's also Tiger Within, about an unlikely friendship between a Holocaust survivor and a teenage runaway; the Billy Crystal and Tiffany Haddish-starring Here Today; documentary Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song, focusing on the singer-songwriter and that immensely popular song; and fellow doco Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful, which turns the lens on the prolific German Austrian photographer.
