TJFF Final News

Toronto Jewish Film Festival Closes Out Its 18th Year

Breaking Records and Breaking Out Of The Box Creatively

Presenting a special Legacy Award and

Honouring two documentary directors with the David A. Stein Memorial Award

David A. Stein Memorial Award presented to:

Barak Heymann, director of The Lone Samaritan

and

Pierre Sauvage, director of Not Idly By: Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust

The Legacy Award presented to:

Sandra Schulberg and Josh Waletzky, for Nuremberg: Its Lesson For Today (1948)

[The 2009 Schulberg/Waletzky Restoration]

(Toronto, April 26, 2010) - “Chai,” (pronounced “high,” more or less) means best-in-life, and that’s exactly what the number 18 signifies, and what this year’s 18th annual Toronto Jewish Film Festival amounted to.

Last night the memorable 18th TJFF closed out 10 days of fascinating features, documentaries and shorts, highlighted by the resurrection of a previously lost and censored landmark documentary about the Nuremberg Trials, and by a remarkable programme contemplating the Jewish origins of comic art.

With the addition of SilverCity Richmond Hill to its list of venues, TJFF 18 attracted record crowds to its line-up of powerful international films. Attendance was up by 25% making this the most successful year for the Festival.

The upshot: TJFF 18 hit a “chai note” indeed.

“I loved seeing so many new faces, probably because of the sidebar series,” says TJFF’s Executive Director Helen Zukerman.  “Many people remarked on the breadth of the programming and said that there really was “something for everyone.”

This year the David A. Stein Memorial Award was presented to two directors for their outstanding works - Barak Heymann, the director of The Lone Samaritan, a fascinating look at a tiny, little-known sect that abhors assimilation out of fear of extinction, and Pierre Sauvage, director of Not Idly By: Peter Bergson, America And The Holocaust.  The latter is a biography of the man who struggled to make saving the Jews of Europe into an American objective during the Second World War. They were two exceptional films that TJFF was honoured to showcase.

Toronto‘s David Stein was a gifted filmmaker who died suddenly in 2004, at age 34. He was the third of four siblings in a loving and supportive family who’ve chosen to remember him in a manner consistent with his passion for film. The David A. Stein Award is affectionately named the “Tzimmie”, after David’s production company, Tzimmes Entertainment. The “Tzimmie” is presented along with a cash prize of $5,000, made possible through the extended family and friends of the Stein Family, and awarded to the director of a documentary making its Canadian premiere at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival.

Finally, TJFF’s new Legacy Award was created this year for the powerful film Nuremberg: Its Lesson For Today. It was the desire of TJFF to honour Sandra Schulberg and Josh Waletzky for this incredible piece of cinematic history, which will survive and enthral for generations to come. Originally produced in 1948, and subsequently suppressed by the U.S. government, the English-language version of Nuremberg was never completed, and the original picture negative and sound elements were lost or destroyed. One of the greatest courtroom dramas in history, Nuremberg illustrates how four international prosecutors built their case against the top Nazi war criminals during a trial that lasted from November 20 1945 to October 1 1946.

Mark your calendars, TJFF returns next year, May 7 – 15, 2011.