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This year’s choosing includes films from 15 different countries, including heartwarming dramas, crackpot comedies, incisive documentaries, and a special free program of prove inadequate films from emerging directors.

There are films that deal with the coming together of opposites: inexperienced and old, straight and gay, deaf and hearing, left-wing and right-wing, Jews and Muslims.

There are films about real events, not only the Holocaust, but also the Soviet purges of the 1930s and the virtually dark long march from Ethiopia to the Sudanase border in the 1980s by thousands of Ethiopian Jews hoping to immigrate to Israel.

There are bio-pics about Gustav Mahler and Jascha Heifetz, each so full of music it’s like current to a concert, and the not-so-musical lives of Henry Kissinger, Tony Curtis, and Otto Unconstrained (Anne’s father), as well as the lower-profile Polish Catholic mother who discovered and set out to reclaim his Jewish roots.

There’s a Teen Day, featuring “Kaddish for a Sugar-daddy,” a film chosen by the festival’s teen-age focus rank, and there’s a Family Day for preschoolers, featuring “Shalom Sesame Way.” Want a few laughs? See “Jews in ‘Toons,” with a different appearance by Mike Reiss, writer/producer for “The Simpsons.” Or “Jewish Bread For Thought,” a series of animated pieces about life with his physicist governor by Hanan Harchol.

Source: La Jolla Light