Columbia Jewish Film Festival

To ring in the festival’s 10th anniversary at the Nickelodeon Theatre, programmer Arline Polinsky has coordinated quite the lineup.

Guest speaker, writer, director and producer Gaylen Ross will talk following a showing of her film Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt with Nazis on Sun. Mar. 21. There is also the traditional Sunday festival brunch at 10:30 a.m. at the Hunter Gatherer prior to the screening. Tickets for the brunch are $30 and available from the Columbia Jewish Community Center.

Film prices are $10 for general admission, $8.50 for students and $40 for a festival pass.

For more information, please visit www.nickelodeon.org.

Festival Lineup

Eli and Ben
5:30 p.m. Saturday & 8 p.m. Monday
Twelve-year-old Eli is left in uncertainty when his father Ben, the architect of the Tel Aviv suburb Herzlya, is arrested. He begins to feel like a traitor as the police continue to question him about his father’s actions. To complicate matters, Ben’s father is also a prominent architect and is preparing to receive the prestigious Israel Prize. Ori Ravid directs. In Hebrew with subtitles. 91 minutes.

The Debt
8 p.m. Saturday & 6 p.m. Monday
Retired Mossad agent Rachel (Gila Almagor) is celebrating the recent release of her memoirs. After an action-filled career, she looks to one moment as the crowning achievement — the day she and two fellow agents tracked and killed the infamous Nazi war criminal known as “The Surgeon of Birkenau.” But former partner Zvi arrives on the scene with the tale of an old man who claims to be the real “surgeon.” Now Rachel must complete one last mission. Directed by Assaf Bernstein. In Hebrew and German with subtitles. 93 minutes.

Hello Goodbye
8 p.m. Sunday & 6 p.m. Tuesday
The Promised Land turns out to be not so promising for assimilated Jew Alain (Gerard Depardieu) and his bourgeois wife Gisele (Fanny Ardant) in this comedy directed by Graham Guit. The couple moves from Paris to Tel Aviv to re-connect with Alain’s roots. But their new flat is a disaster, the neighbors are less than welcoming and Gisele develops a rather close relationship with a handsome rabbi. In French with subtitles. 98 minutes.

Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt with Nazis
11:30 Sunday & 8 p.m. Tuesday
The legacy of famous Hungarian Jew Rezso Kasztner is shrouded in mystery. Is he a hero who rescued thousands of Jews and died trying? Or was he a Nazi colluder who “sold his soul to the devil”? Director Gaylen Ross attempts to find out. In English and Hebrew with subtitles. 120 minutes.

Lemon Tree
5:30 p.m. Sunday & 8 p.m. Wednesday
Widowed and living alone, Salma Zidane spends her days tending to the lemon grove her great-grandparents planted years ago on the Palestinian West Bank. All is well until the Israeli minister of defense decides to build a house next door and declares that her trees be cut down. Zidane hires a lawyer to fight for her cause. When it seems nearly hopeless, she finds help from an unlikely source. In Arabic, Hebrew, French and English. 106 minutes.

Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
3 p.m. Sunday & 6 p.m. Wednesday
Director Aviva Kempner tells the story of Gertrude Berg, the creator, principal writer and star of the comedy-drama radio show The Goldbergs, which aired from 1929 to 1946 and was adapted as a television sitcom in 1949. The film includes interviews with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, actor Ed Asner, producers Norman Lear and Gary David Goldberg and NPR correspondent Susan Stamberg. 92 minutes.