Best movies like Forgiveness

In Jerusalem's orthodox neighborhoods, it's Succoth, seven days celebrating life's essentials in a sukkah, a temporary shack of both deprivation and hospitality. A devout couple, Moshe and Mali, married nearly five years and childless, are broke and praying for a miracle...

A man providing overnight watch to a deceased member of his former Orthodox Jewish community finds himself opposite a malevolent entity.

Saar is an HIV positive gay man living in London, where he found refuge from the religious kibbutz where he grew up in Israel. Ever since he was diagnosed with HIV, Saar has craved his family's love, while they struggle with fears and prejudices.

Avi Nesher's new film tracks the complex relationship between a Jerusalem Graffiti artist and a mysterious modern day prophet who is imprisoned in an abandoned apartment across the Artist's window.

When Eyal finishes the week of mourning for his late son, his wife urges him to return to their routine but instead he gets high with a young neighbor and sets out to discover that there are still things in his life worth living for.

Red Cow is a coming-of-age film that takes place in the days leading up to the assassination of Rabin and depicts the life of Benny, 16, orphaned from mother at birth and the only child of Joshua - a religious, right-wing extremist, in those critical junctures when she is forming her sexual, religious and political awareness.

A Jewish woman is recruited to help track down a German commander who was her former husband.

The year 2000 approaches in Jerusalem's Orthodox Mea Shearim quarter, where the women work, keep house, and have children so the men can study the Torah and the Talmud. Rivka is happily and passionately married to Meir, but they remain childless. The yeshiva's rabbi, who is Meir's father, wants Meir to divorce Rivka: "a barren woman is no woman." Rivka's sister, Malka, is in love with Yakov, a Jew shunned by the yeshiva as too secular. The rabbi arranges Malka's marriage to Yossef, whose agitation when fulfilling religious duties approaches the grotesque. Can the sisters sort out their hearts' desires within this patriarchal world? If not, have they any other options?

In May 1948, shortly before the creation of the State of Israel, hundreds of immigrants from across Europe arrive in Palestine--only to risk arrest by British troops.

In the conservative city of Jerusalem, Ami Shoshan, an Israeli football player, is forced by a mafia boss to pose as a homosexual, a punishment for flirting with the criminal's girlfriend. Shoshan is banned by players and fans of his team, but becomes a hero of the gay community.

An ancient skeleton has been discovered in Jerusalem in a rich man's tomb. Colouration of the wrist and leg bones indicates the cause of death was crucifiction. other signs, include a gold coin bearing the marks of Pontius Pilate and faint markings around the skull, lead authorities to suspect that these could be the bones of Jesus Christ. Politicians, clerics, religious extremists and those using terror as a means to an end, find their beliefs and identities tested while risking their lives to unearth the truth.....

It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik, a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous acquaintances Sy Ableman.

A beautifully affecting love story that has rightly earned comparisons to Brokeback Mountain, Haim Tabakman's potent yet impeccably restrained tale has won awards and accolades at film festivals the world over. Aaron, a pillar in Jerusalem's Orthodox community is respected by friends and family. However, when he hires handsome runaway student Ezri to assist with his business, sexual tensions bristle and the pair cautiously embark on a love affair. Meanwhile, a neighbouring shopkeeper persists in seeing a man of her own choosing, even though she's been promised by her father to another. As forbidden truths come to the fore, these lovers are forced to either confront or relent in the face of a centuries-old religious community, with startling results.

Arthur Goldman is a rich Jewish industrialist, living in luxury in a Manhattan high-rise. He banters with his assistant Charlie, often shocking Charlie with his outrageousness and irreverence about aspects of Jewish life. Nonetheless, Charlie is astonished when, one day, Israeli secret agents burst in and arrest Goldman for being not a Jewish businessman but a Nazi war criminal. Whisked to Israel for trial, Goldman forces his accusers to face not only his presumed guilt--but their own.

A woman learns about the death of her Orthodox Jewish father, a rabbi. She returns home and has romantic feelings rekindled for her best childhood friend, who is now married to her cousin.

14 year old Jewish Mina, is trying to navigate between a surreal routine dictated by the civil war in Ethiopia and her last days of youth with her Christian boyfriend Eli. When she discovers that her family is planning to immigrate to Israel and escape the war, she weaves an alternate plan in order to save Eli. But in times of war, plans tend to go wrong. Marsha's coming of age film debut film is based on her childhood memories of a civil-war-torn Ethiopia.

Nostalgic comic drama in which Cyril and Amos, two veterans of the Normandy landings, return to France to visit the grave of their wartime buddy. They encounter Waldo, an American on a similar mission, and the meeting sparks memories of an old girlfriend from the past. With the mysterious American lady Lisa in their wake, Cyril and Waldo decide to try and track her down.

When one of the brothers (Ohayn) dies, all the whole family comes for Shiva (Jewish tradition,when the family sits seven days at the home after the death one of their family). A large family with a lot of problems and conflicts between them.

During the harrows of WWII, Jo, a young shepherd along with the help of the widow Horcada, helps to smuggle Jewish children across the border from southern France into Spain.

A man searching for his childhood best friend — a Polish violin prodigy orphaned in the Holocaust — who vanished decades before on the night of his first public performance.

When a Tango dancer asks a Rabbi to enter a dance competition, there’s one big problem—due to his Orthodox beliefs, he’s not allowed to touch her! But the prize money would save his school from bankruptcy, so they develop a plan to enter the competition without sacrificing his faith, and the bonds of family and community are tested one dazzling dance step at a time in this lighthearted fable.

The story is about two twin brothers, Azriel and Gavriel. Azriel is a shy, religious Jew who works in a fruit shop in Jaffa. Gavriel, is a hoodlum and a good-for-nothing hustler who runs a Snooker Bar. Gavriel and his friend Hanuka make easy money by swindling people into gambling on Snooker games.One day Gavriel is forced to renew contact with his brother because he is in trouble with a gangster.

Inspired by actual events in the late nineties when Hasidic Jews were recruited as mules to smuggle ecstasy from Europe into the United States.

The director's mother's last wish was to be buried as a Muslim in Omer, her Jewish hometown, where she lived for 20 years. During the process of separation from the mother, the film reveals the family intimacy, secrets and dilemmas, raises serious questions about women's identity, nationality and the meaning of home.

Menahem Lang, an actor with an extraordinary singing voice, returns to Bnei Brak, the city in Israel where he grew up and a center of ultra-orthodox Judaism. Now in his 30s, Lang left the city at 20, following years of rape and sexual abuse by elder, devout family men in the community. Yet, Lang was far from being an isolated case: his conversations with other abused young men document a cycle of sexual predators and tormented lives.

Within Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community, a widower battles for custody of his son.

A young Orthodox Jewish woman becomes ensconced in a nocturnal community of prostitutes and drug dealers that congregates in the ancient cemetery atop Jerusalem's Mount of Olives.

Azulai is a policeman in Jaffa, whose incompetence is only matched by his soft-heartedness. His superiors want to send him to early retirement, but he would like to stay on the force, and the criminals of Jaffa don't want to see him leave either...

Noemi, the studious, devoutly religious daughter of a prominent rabbi, convinces her father to postpone her marriage for a year so that she might study at a Jewish seminary for women in the ancient Kabalistic seat of Safe.

In 1941, the inhabitants of a small Jewish village in Central Europe organize a fake deportation train so that they can escape the Nazis and flee to Palestine.

Haim-Aaron is a bright, ultra-orthodox religious scholar living in Jerusalem. His talents and devotion are envied by all. One evening, following a self-imposed fast, Haim-Aaron collapses and loses consciousness. The paramedics announce his death, but his father takes over resuscitation efforts and, beyond all expectations, Haim-Aaron comes back to life. After the accident, try as he might, Haim-Aaron remains apathetic to his studies. He feels overwhelmed by a sudden awakening of his body and suspects this is God testing him. He wonders if he should stray from the prescribed path and find a way to rekindle his faith... The title means "Rectify" in Hebrew; nevertheless the movie is called Tikkun in the English-speaking world.

A Protestant World War II pilot and a Jewish girl fall in love in Jerusalem, even though their diverse backgrounds threaten to pull them apart.

Eighteen-year-old Shira is the youngest daughter of the Mendelman family. She is about to be married off to a promising young man of the same age and background. It is a dream come true, and Shira feels prepared and excited. On Purim, her twenty-eight-year-old sister, Esther, dies while giving birth to her first child, Mordechay. The pain and grief that overwhelm the family postpone Shira's promised match. Everything changes when a match is proposed to Yochay-Esther's late husband-to a widow from Belgium. Yochay feels it's too early, although he realizes that sooner or later he must seriously consider getting married again. When the girls' mother finds out that Yochay may marry the widow and move to Belgium with her only grandchild, she proposes a match between Shira and the widower. Shira will have to choose between her heart's wish and her family duty. She will find out that the void which she must choose exists only within her heart.

In 1980 the black Falashas in Ethiopia are recognised as genuine Jews and are secretly carried to Israel. The day before the transport the son of a Jewish mother dies. In his place and with his name (Schlomo) she takes a Christian 9-year-old boy.

In 1939, Kalman, an ambitious young businessman, leaves Europe to join his sister Samantha in Palestine. She lives with Dov, an idealistic architect obsessed with the Bauhaus style. With their friends, they form a group, which discusses the future Israeli State.

In a 1940s New York, two Jewish teenage boys are determined to remain friends despite the deep differences between their two families.

A portrait of various gay Orthodox Jews who struggle to reconcile their faith and their sexual orientation.

This documentary attempts to go beyond the sensationalized media coverage and the stereotypes to examine several key conflicts from the point of view of both Black and Jewish activists.

A handsome Washington, D.C. doctor and a young New York woman fall in love at an unusual time...after they get married. Leah Lever is married to an Orthodox rabbi, Benjamin Lever, whose brother, Jake is a successful cardiologist and a non-practicing Jew. Jake is stunned when Benjamin dies suddenly, but not as stunned as when he is told that, under an ancient Jewish Law, he is expected to marry the childless Leah to carry on Benjamin's name.

Michal is 32 years old. She became religious 12 years ago, and only now is she getting married. A month before the wedding, while checking out the catering for the event, the groom has a change of heart and the wedding is called off. Michal feels she’s unable to go back to ordinary life, to the usual course of matchmaking. She feels this is the moment to change something very basic in her personality. A simple belief that God is good and sweet; that He wants to give and is only waiting for her to wish it. Michal goes on a month-long journey lasting up to the planned wedding day: “I have the venue, the dress, the apartment; God can easily come up with my groom.”

Shmuel, a Hasidic cantor in Upstate New York and distraught at the untimely death of his wife, struggles to find religious solace, while secretly obsessing over how her body will decay. As a clandestine partnership develops with Albert, a local community college biology professor, the two embark on a darkly comic and increasingly literal undertaking into the underworld.

An accident during a bar mitzvah celebration leads to a gendered rift in a devout Orthodox community in Jerusalem, in this rousing, good-hearted tale about women speaking truth to patriarchal power.

The year is 1983 and Yaakov Cohen, the owner of a Jerusalem printing press, is tired from being pushed around. It seems that he was born on the wrong side, with the wrong family name and in a moment's decision he decides to establish a Sephardic-ultra-Orthodox list that will run to the Jerusalem municipality. He gathers two friends, and together they improvise a campaign - no means, no connections, no money, but with much rage, passion and a sense of justice.

Mivtza Savta ("Operation Grandma") is a satirical Israeli comedy about three very different brothers trying to get around many obstacles to bury their grandmother on her kibbutz. The story takes place in Israel, in the fictional kibbutz "Asisim".

A man named David Katz remembers the formative summer he spent as a kid in an Orthodox Jewish summer camp.

Louis Theroux spends time with a small and very committed subculture of ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers. He discovers a group of people who consider it their religious and political obligation to populate some of the most sensitive areas of the West Bank, especially those with a spiritual significance dating back to the Bible. Throughout his journey, Louis gets close to the people most involved with driving the extreme end of the Jewish settler movement - finding them warm, friendly, humorous, and deeply troubling.

A drama inspired by the best-selling autobiography "Why Me" by Jacob Damkani. "A New Spirit" tells the story of two brothers, Jacob and Shmuel, who grew up in a poor, traditional Jewish family. As they mature, Shmuel becomes more orthodox and religious while Jacob is exposed to Christianity and ends up becoming a leader of Messianic Judaism, spreading the word of Jesus. Shmuel and the entire Orthodox community treat Jacob as a radical missionary and accuse him of stealing pure Jewish souls. The conflict between the two brothers escalates to real violence when an attempt is made to kill Jacob, causing the dissolution of the entire family.

"My Father My Lord" is an intimate and deeply disturbing story of the conflict between a father's love and his deep devotion to religion. A respected Orthodox Rabbi dotes on his only son but his religious strictures leave an emotional gap between the impish child and the stern father. When the father's all-consuming obsession with observing religious ritual inadvertently leads to tragedy, his previously subservient wife rages against both her husband and God. A dramatic retelling of the story of Abraham.

On April 9, 1948, a Jewish militia entered the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin and killed over 100 villagers. Soon after, a mental hospital was built on the ruins. The first patients to be committed were Holocaust survivors. A legend says that to this day, the survivors have been communicating with the ghosts of the village. Forgiveness tells the story of David Adler, a 20-year old American-Israeli who decides to move back to Israel, only to find himself committed to a mental institution that sits on the ruins of a Palestinian village called Deir Yassin. Flashbacks and flashforwards reveal the events that led up to his hospitalization.

As 85-year-old President Lorenzo Snow struggles to vanquish the two million dollar indebtedness of the Mormon church in 1899, he feels inspired to journey from Salt Lake City by train and carriage to St. George in southern Utah. Along the way he witnesses the effects of severe drought. The next day, in the St. George Tabernacle, he receives inspiration that by paying tithing, the "windows of heaven" will open, pouring out blessings. He promises the people that they can plant crops and rain will come, then continues to preach tithing as he returns home where he awaits favorable weather reports from St. George.