One of the longest running collaborations of two arts institutions in New York City, the 15th annual New York Jewish Film Festival will take place at
The Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center (165 West 65th St.) from
January 11 through 26, 2006. There will be some additional screenings at Makor/Steinhardt Center of the 92nd Street Y (35 West 67th St.)

Featuring two world, five US, and 16 NY premieres, this joint effort of The Jewish Museum and The Film Society of Lincoln Center presents 32 productions illuminating the rich diversity of the world-wide Jewish experience from Austria, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Israel, Mexico, The Netherlands, Russia, Spain, and the United States.

Films concerned with art, women, revelations about historical events and family secrets, are among the diverse array of offerings, as well as a program featuring the legendary French actress Sarah Bernhardt. Several filmmakers will be in New York to discuss their films during the festival.

"As always, The New York Jewish Film Festival emphasizes the diversity of the Jewish experience and our 2006 line-up is an excellent example of that," says Richard Peña, The Film Society of Lincoln Center program director. "The films range across an extensive number of nations, time periods and issues, some controversial, all of them vital, and while they are presented here within a Jewish context, they do in fact resonate with all of us."

Highlights include world premieres of two documentaries. In director Tanaz Eshaghian's fun film "Love Iranian-American Style," the young, 30-something, first-generation Iranian Jewish filmmaker (whose family wants to marry her off), takes us on a guided tour through New York and "Irangeles" as she reluctantly goes on a series of blind dates. This film will be shown with director Ramin Farahani's "Jews of Iran"--a look at the lives of Persian Jews who remained in Iran after 1979's Islamic Revolution.

In "Best Sister," Ira Wohl, director of the Academy Award-winning "Best Boy" and "Best Man," presents an intimate portrait of his 80-year-old cousin Frances Reiss. In "Best Man," Frances was the primary caretaker for her mentally retarded brother, Philly, who is also the subject of "Best Boy." In "Best Sister," Frances finds herself in the difficult position of depending on others. During one week of filming in Queens, Wohl captures Frances in an emotional arc of exhaustion, loneliness, dignity and joy. There will also be special screenings of "Best Boy" and "Best Man" at The Jewish Museum on January 24.

Several dramatic works will receive New York premieres.

Based on a true story, director Radu Mihaileanu's drama, "Live and Become," opens in a Sudanese refugee camp in 1984. An Ethiopian Christian mother urges her son to assume a Jewish identity in order to escape war and famine. As part of the airlift "Operation Moses," Solomon/Shlomo is adopted by an Israeli family, and begins the sometimes painful entrance into Israeli society, all the while dreaming of reuniting with his birth mother.

Hungarian director Mari Cantu's "Rosehill" shows the events of the 1956 Hungarian revolution through the eyes of two 10-year-old siblings whose father, a high-ranking government official, is put in a dangerous position.

In Spanish filmmakers Dominic Harari and Teresa de Pelegrí's screwball comedy, "Only Human," Leni introduces her Palestinian fiancé to her Jewish family. Murder, mayhem, and belly dancing ensue in a cross-cultural romp that provides comic relief to a seemingly irresolvable conflict.

In French director Karin Albou's "La Petite Jerusalem"--set in the low-income suburb of Paris known as "Little Jerusalem"--passions ignite when Laura, already torn between worldly desires and her Sephardic family's Orthodox traditions, meets Djamel, an exiled Algerian Muslim.

Also of note is director Pavel Loungin's "Roots," a dark comedy about a smooth-talking grifter who devises a grand money-making scheme in a backwater Ukrainian town. With the support of the local mob, he casts the citizens of Golutvin as long-lost relatives of Jewish tourists, creating a heritage tour run amok.

There are a number of documentaries concerned with long buried family secrets being revealed. In "The Two Lives of Eva," filmmaker Esther Hoffenberg pieces together the enigmatic history of her late mother Eva, a privileged German, raised Lutheran, who left her husband in Poland after World War II, remarried, and reinvented herself as a proud Jewish woman in Paris. Using archival film, vintage home movies and her mother's recorded voice, Hoffenberg uncovers Eva's struggle with mental illness, her feelings of guilt and cowardice, and her impulse to survive in this US premiering film.

In its New York premiere, Israeli director Ido Haar's "Melting Siberia" documents a successful search for Haar's grandfather, a Red Army hero who abandoned his pregnant wife and disappeared somewhere in the Siberian steppes. The resulting reunion is full of surprises for all involved.

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