PHOTO COU RTESY OF TIFF

arts & life
film

Go East,
Film Fans

The Toronto Film

Festival offers world

premieres, celebrity

sightings — and

plenty of Jewish

connections.

Sarah Silverman stars as a
drug-addled New Jersey wife
and mom in 1 Smile Back.

For details about the
Toronto International Film
Festival, visit tiff.net .

60 August 27 • 2015

Nate Bloom
Contributing
Writer
I

quick four-plus hour
drive from Metro
Detroit, Toronto offers a
mecca of city style, international
dining options — and from Sept.
1-20, the 39th-annual Toronto
International Film Festival.
Screenings, lectures, discussions,
workshops and the chance to
meet filmmakers from around the
world have helped boost TIFF into

A

becoming one of the leading public
film festivals in the world.
This year, more than 150 films
will be screened and by my count,
46 films have a significant Jewish
tie — theme, director, screenwriter
or important actor. All the films
with a Jewish theme are covered
below, as well as many with a
Jewish creative tie.

JEWISH-THEMED
FILMS
■ The Festival is divided into 12
programs; the Gala program is the
red carpet one. Competing in this

category is Septembers of Shiraz,
which is based on a novel of the
same name by Dalia Sofer, 43, an
Iranian Jew who fled with her fam-
ily to the United States when she
was 11. The novel was a finalist for
National Jewish Book of the Year.
The novel and film tell the story
of Isaac Amin, a wealthy Iranian-
Jewish gem dealer who is impris-
oned in Iran in 1981 and tortured.
Adrien Brody, 43, stars as Isaac.
■"Special Presentations" is
another prestigious program;
among the films in this category
is Son of Saul, a Holocaust film
which engendered fiercely dispa-
rate reviews when it was shown
at the Cannes festival. Saul is a
Jewish prisoner ordered to clear
corpses from gas chambers. When
he finds a spare moment, Saul
hides his son where he can in
the camp. The New York Times
called it "a radically dehistoricized,
intellectually repellant movie in
which the focus on Saul comes at
the expense of a broader context.
However, many other reviewers
were laudatory, including Claude
Lanzmann, 89, the director of the
groundbreaking 1985 documen-
tary, Shoah. The director is Laszlo
Nemes, 39, a Hungarian Jew.
■Academy Award-winning
Israel-born actress Natalie
Portman makes her writing and
directorial debut with A Tale of
Love and Darkness, an adaptation
of the bestselling memoir by Israeli
author Amos Oz.
■Among the festival's documen-
tary program is P.S. Jerusalem. It
chronicles, over three years, Israeli
director Danae Elon's decision to
leave America and return to live in
Jerusalem with her two sons and

Natalie Portman wrote, directed and stars in A Tale
of Love and Darkness.

her husband, an Algerian Jew who
grew up in Israel. Elon, 45, is the
daughter of famous Israeli author
Amos Elon (1926-2009). Amos
left Israel in 2004, disillusioned
with Israel's path since 1967, and
opposed his daughter's decision to
resettle there.
■In the "Shorts Cuts: Canada"
program, you'll fmd the come-
dic documentary Bacon & God's
Wrath, a mixed-media film by
Canadian Sol Friedman about a
90-year-old woman whose lifelong
Jewish faith is challenged when she
discovers Google.
■More serious is Rabin, the
Last Day, an Israeli-French drama
directed by Israeli filmmaker
Amos Gitai, 64, about the final
days of Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin. It is screened in
the prestigious "Masters" program.

FEATURE FILMS
Here are four other films with
major Jewish connections compet-
ing in the Gala program:
■Demolition stars Jake
Gyllenhaal, 34, as an investment
banker who is devastated by his
wife's death.
■Peter Sollett, 39, directs
Freeheld, which tells the true story
of a lesbian police officer with ter-
minal cancer who fought to leave
her pension benefits to her domes-
tic partner.
■Program is a bio-pic about
disgraced bicycle-racer Lance
Armstrong (not Jewish). Directed
by Brit Stephen Frears, 74, it stars
Ben Foster, 34, as Armstrong.
Dustin Hoffman, 78, and Bryan
Greenberg, 37, have supporting
roles.

■Stonewall is about the 1969
riots in front of the New York gay
bar, the Stonewall, which marked
the start of the gay-rights move-
ment. Written by Jon Robin Baitz,
53, it co-stars Ron Perlman, 65,
and Joey King, 16.
Other films in "Special
Presentations" include:
■I Smile Back, based on a novel
by Amy Koppelman, 46. It stars
Sarah Silverman, 44, as a New
Jersey housewife and mother, with
a rich husband (Josh Charles, 43),
whose life is falling apart due to
depression, infidelity and drug use.
Advance reviews praise Silverman's
performance. However, direction