The Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth County, in partnership with the Axelrod Performing Arts Center, will once again present an Israel Film Festival, for one week this summer. Admission is $10 per film.
The films that will be shown at the Museum begin on Tuesday, August 2nd, 2016, at 4 p.m., with Dough, featuring Jonathan Pryce as an old Jewish baker whose business is saved by his young Muslim apprentice in the British “dramedy" DOUGH. Widowed and down on his luck, Nat Dayan (Pryce) is desperate to save his London bakeshop. His customers are dying off, his sons have no interest in keeping the family business afloat, and hostile businessman Sam Cotton (London Film Critics' Circle winner Philip Davis) has his own greedy plans for the property. Nat reluctantly enlists the help of teenager Ayyash (Jerome Holder), a refugee from Darfur. The Muslim boy assists with the bakery’s daily chores, while selling cannabis on the side to help his struggling mother. When Ayyash accidently drops his stash into the dough, the challah starts flying off the shelf, and an unlikely friendship forms.
The second film, on Wednesday, August 3, 2016 at 7:30 p.m. will be Rabin The Last Day, which focuses on the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, which marked a grim turning point for Israel. In the eyes of many, the murder ended hope for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and altered history. But, as Amos Gitai sets out to prove, Rabin's assassination was the culmination of a hate campaign that emanated from the rabbis and Israel's far right.
The final film offered at the Museum is Phoenix, which stars Nina Hoss as Nelly, a German-Jewish nightclub singer, who has survived a concentration camp, but with her face disfigured. After undergoing reconstructive surgery, Nelly emerges with a new face, one similar but different enough that her former husband, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), doesn't recognize her. Nelly walks into a dangerous game as she tries to figure out if he may have been the one who betrayed her. It will be shown on Thursday, August 4, 2016 at 7 p.m.