Jewish International Film Festival 2022

Overview

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 Melbourne cinemas, with 31 feature films, 25 documentaries, six short films and even episodes from episodes a TV series, in fact.

That lineup will hit the Classic in Elsternwick from Wednesday, March 2–Sunday, April 4 and the Lido in Hawthorn from Wednesday, March 3 through until the same ending date, 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; Tahara, a coming-of-age story starring Shiva Baby's Rachel Sennott; the Cannes-premiering A Radiant Girl, which steps back to the Occupation in Paris in World War II; and satire Let It Be Morning, which picked up Best Film at the 2021 Ophir Awards (aka the Israeli Oscars).

Or, there's also Haute Couture, which dives into French fashion; 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.