Israel gay film
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A moment when a grimly orthodox wife, towards the end of the film, finally opens her mouth and defends Saar had the audience cheering at the screening I attended.
Much to Simon’s surprise, however, the clandestine business deal turns to true love.
The sexual politics of the film are hard to pin down. Amazing Grace, made nearly a decade later, is a much stronger piece of work, about two gay men – one an innocent teenager from a troubled family, the other an HIV patient – who fall for each other after meeting in Tel Aviv.
It’s a sad, poetic film, with some beautiful visual flourishes.
A love story unfolds. And though the groundbreaking portrayal of transgender characters has won Jill Soloway’s Transparent (2014-) an army of fans, it’s just as much a Jewish series, topped by a likeable performance by Kathryn Hahn as Rabbi Raquel Fein.
These 10 films focus on culturally Jewish films featuring gay and lesbian protagonists, almost all of which were directed by Jewish filmmakers.
The Boys in the Band (1970)
Director: William Friedkin
“What I am Michael is a 32-year-old, ugly, pock-marked Jew fairy, and if it takes me a little while to pull myself together, and if I smoke a little grass before I get up the nerve to show my face to the world, it’s nobody’s goddamned business but my own.
It was nominated for the Golden Globe for best foreign language film and was unlucky to be up against Pedro Almodóvar’s all-conquering All about My Mother (1999).
Paragraph 175 (2000)
Directors: Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman
The Nazi persecution of homosexuals is seldom explored on film.
Is the meaning of the film’s title, explained at the vibrant Jewish wedding that starts the film, a homophobic nonsense? Most contemporary reviews drew lazy comparisons with Brokeback Mountain (2005), despite the emphasis on religion and, crucially, the modern setting of the Israeli film. Reader donations help us do that. Will you give what you can to keep Hey Alma open to all?
(2009) nearly made it through its fabulous title alone (shame the film is such dreck).
Newsletter subscription is currently unavailable. It hasn’t dated a jot – more’s the pity, as resistance to effeminate men and gay adoption still prevail today.
Matthew Broderick, fresh from success in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), is sweet as Arnold’s flawed love interest, while you may need to take cover for Anne Bancroft’s barnstorming portrayal of Arnold’s difficult mother, embodying many Jewish mama stereotypes, for better or worse.
The film’s exploration of gender performativity is beyond ahead of its time. Yossi is his finest work yet, with beautifully written, likeable characters, an unexpectedly moving scene of nudity and one of the most perfect endings in recent Israeli cinema.
Who’s Gonna Love Me Now? (2016)
Directors: Tomer Heymann and Barak Heymann
After a year on the festival circuit, where it won the documentary award at the Berlin Film Festival and the audience award at the UK International Jewish Film Festival, Barak and Tomer Heymann’s feature about the life of Saar Maoz, an HIV positive gay man living in London after being rejected by his Israeli family and driven away from his Kibbutz, is finally getting a short cinema release in April 2017.
The documentary was shot over a long five-year period and was featured in a variety of international film festivals to a positive reception.
Yossi (2012)
A sequel to Eytan Fox’s Yossi and Jagger, the film Yossi follows the title character’s life following his encounter with Jagger ten years earlier. Jenny Schecter from The L Word remains queer TV’s most polarising figure, while the television adaptation of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, starring Al Pacino as vicious, closeted senator Roy Cohn, remains an all-time great.
Yossi is now older, plumper, single, depressed and in the closet. Stunning performances from our two favorite Rachels give viewers a glimpse into the realities of exploring queerness within the Orthodox world.
Tahara (2020)
Set in the Rachel Sennott queer Jewish cinematic universe, Olivia Peace’s film shares the story of Hannah romantically pursuing her friend while at their former Hebrew school classmate’s funeral.
A sequel, He Is My Girl (2009), followed, also directed by Jean-Jacques Zilbermann.
Aimée & Jaguar (1999)
Director: Max Färberböck
Maria Schrader and Juliane Köhler shared the best actress award at the Berlin Film Festival for their performances as two real-life women who embarked on a dangerous love affair in Nazi Germany.
A number of British films just missed the list, including Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), in which Jewish doctor Peter Finch enjoyed British cinema’s first male-on-male kiss; award-winning short film Sidney Turtlebaum (2008), starring Derek Jacobi as an elderly gay Jewish pickpocket and conman; and Lisa Gornick’s latest film, The Book of Gabrielle (2016), a funny and sharp study of a Jewish lesbian whose sexuality is thrown into turmoil.
Gala hits from BFILGBTQIA+ film festivals past, such as New York comedy Jeffrey (1995) and Israeli romance Out in the Dark (2012), just missed the cut, while Oy Vey! My Son Is Gay!! An LGBT classic for Israelis, this film expertly navigates gay romance within the limitations of the IDF.
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To Each Her Own (2018)
This French film is essentially the opposite of“Kissing Jessica Stein” in the sense that it follows Simone, a lesbian who lives with her partner Claire but ultimately realizes she’s attracted to a man.
Barbra Streisand’s classic film follows the life of Yentl, an ambitious woman residing in 18th century Eastern Europe, who disguises herself as a man to attend yeshiva. Luckily, Heather Juergensen and Jennifer Westfeldt, who wrote and star as said let’s-give-it-a-whirl ‘lesbians’, have wit and chemistry on their side and create the nearest cinema has come to a gay Woody Allen movie.
The film, a directorial debut for Michael Mayer, portrays the political complications of an Israeli falling in love with a Palestinian in the West Bank and the inevitable problems of homosexuality in a conservative Muslim society.
Cupcakes (2013)
In a different genre from the celebrated Eytan Fox, director of Yossi and Jagger, Cupcakes is a sweet comedy of a group of five friends in Tel Aviv who enter the Eurovision Song Contest as a joke.