11/2009 – Festival Audience Votes Its Favorites
Festival Press Releases
Press releases for this year’s Boston Jewish Film Festival
Festival Audience Votes Its Favorites – Two Awards Given at 2009 Boston Jewish Film Festival
NEWTON, Massachusetts – November 24, 2009 – The audience at this year’s 21st annual Boston Jewish Film Festival has voted its favorites. In total, the Festival screened 40 films from 15 countries. The Festival’s audience voted in two categories, Best Feature Fiction and Best Documentary Feature.
Award-winners are as follows:
- Best Feature Fiction: Eli & Ben (Eli v’Ben) (Israel, 2008, 89 min., 35mm) had its Massachusetts Premiere screening in this year’s Festival. In Ori Ravid’s debut feature film, hunky Lior Ashkenazi (Walk on Water) plays father and husband Ben, the city architect of the Tel Aviv suburb, Herzliya. Ben’s father, also an architect, is about to win the Israel Prize. Ben’s son, Eli, is 12. Watching the police take his father into custody changes everything for Eli. When the police question him about his father’s actions, Eli begins to feel like a double agent. Where, he wonders, is the truth? Director Ori Ravid commented on his win: “I’m very honored and moved by this award. Eli & Ben is a film that comes from the heart and I’m happy that your audience could share this experience with me.”
- Best Documentary Feature: Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt with Nazis, by Gaylen Ross (USA, 2008, 84 minutes, video), had its New England Premiere screening in this year’s Festival. A Hungarian Jew who saved nearly 1700 Jews during WWII by striking a deal with the Nazis, Rezso Kasztner’s legacy has been mixed. In Israel, following his loss of a libel suit as “the man who sold his soul to the Devil,” he was subsequently assassinated.
Documentary filmmaker Gaylen Ross (Blood Money: Switzerland’s Nazi Gold, 1997 Festival) succeeds in making Kasztner’s killer speak candidly, for the first time in 50 years. She effectively puts Kasztner’s trial in its historical context and helps his family find some measure of solace. Director Gaylen Ross responded to her win with this comment: “Receiving the ‘Audience Award’ for Best Feature Documentary of the 2009 Boston Jewish Film Festival is not only an honor for me, but a tribute to the important discussion the film has prompted about the controversial Jewish rescuer Rezso Kasztner, and the recognition he now is receiving for the thousands of Jewish lives he saved during the Holocaust. It has been an incredibly rewarding experience for me to bring this film and story to audiences, so that people can decide for themselves the legacy of this forgotten man and his remarkable tale of rescue.”
Sony Creative Software has generously donated the awards, given to each film’s director, in the form of Sony Vegas Pro 9 film editing software.
Jpeg photos are available for each of the winning films.
Previous Boston Jewish Film Festival Award Winners
Prior winners for Best Feature Fiction:
2008 – Noodle, by Ayelet Menahemi
2007 – Beaufort (Bufor) by Joseph Cedar
2006 – Ira and Abby, directed by Robert Cary
2005 – Live and Become, directed by Radu Mihaileanu
2004 – Wondrous Oblivion, directed by Paul Morrison
2003 – Yossi and Jagger, directed by Eytan Fox
2002 – Monsieur Batignole, directed by Gérard Jugnot
Prior winners for Best Feature Documentary:
2008 – Holy Land Hardball, by Brett Rapkin and Erik Keston
2007– Praying with Lior, by Ilana Trachtman
2006 – The Rape of Europa, directed by Richard Berge, Nicole Newnham and Bonni Cohen
2005 – 39 Pounds of Love, directed by Dani Menkin
2004 – Watermarks, directed by Yaron Zilberman
2003 – Thunder in Guyana, directed by Suzanne Wasserman
2002 – Strange Fruit, directed by Joel Katz
