Buffalo’s longest-lived such event, the Buffalo International Jewish Film Festival celebrates its 23rd year with a week’s worth of films from around the world at the Amherst Theater for the remainder of the week. Among the films to be screened:

Scene from "The Year My Parents Went On Vacation"

BAD FAITH

Sometimes the best way to deal with seemingly insurmountable differences is to make light of them. At least that’s the tactic of this pleasant romantic comedy from France about the relationship between a Jewish woman and a Muslim man. For four years Clara and Ismael’s differences seem invisible to them: Neither one thinks of themselves as religious. But when she gets pregnant and they decide to make the relationship permanent—i.e., they’ll tell their parents—things start to get a lot more difficult. Ismael expects to name their child (if a boy) Abdelkrim, after his father, even though his father himself didn’t like the name. Clara’s mother is reduced to weeping, and they come round only by persuading themselves that Ismael will convert. Bad Faith benefits from performances by two popular stars who will be familiar to fans of French cinema—Cécile De France, of Avenue Montaigne, Haute tension, L’Auberge espagnole and its sequel Russian Dolls, and Roschdy Zem, co-star of Days of Glory, the Oscar-nominated drama looks at the ill treatment of North Africans who fought for France during World War. Zem also co-scripted and directed the film, which won the Cesar (the French Oscar) for Best First Work. (M. Faust) Sun 6pm, Thu 1pm.

FAMILY LAW

As he did several years ago in Lost Embrace, the Argentinian director Daniel Burman sketches the uncertain, mutedly conflicted, fundamentally affectionate relations between fathers and sons. In Lost Embrace (which also played at the JFF), Burman showed a lighter touch, but that one had a mild sadness threading through its amusing domestic encounters. The newer film has some of the same qualities, but its sadness is a little more palpable. Ariel Perelman (Daniel Hendler) is the son of a popular lawyer, and an attorney himself. But not in practice with his old man, a hardworking but somewhat free wheeling parent (Arturo Goetz). “I went for justice, not law,” he tells us in a voiceover, a little priggishly. When he was a kid, he notes, his father, whom he refers to as “Perelman Senior,” didn’t take him to the zoo or the movies; he took him along on his court rounds. Ariel sounds unsure whether he should be nostalgic or resentful. “I think fathers and sons don’t have to talk about everything,” he says earlier. But Ariel winds up being surprised and discomfited by at least a couple of things he learns about Perelman Senior, and wondering whether things would have been better had he known. Burman’s movie is a little too oblique for its own good, or ours, but its sense of ironic wistfulness and its affection for its characters are winning. (George Sax) Tue 1pm, Thu 8:30pm.

SOMEONE TO RUN WITH

Adapted from a young adult novel by the acclaimed writer David Grossman, Someone to Run With has a perfect hook for a mystery tale. Assaf, a shy 17-year-old boy with a dreary summer job working for the city in Jerusalem, is assigned to the dog pound. His job is to find the owner of a Golden Labrador and serve her a summons. With no idea how to accomplish this task, he simply lets the dog free and follows it, assuming it will lead him to its mistress. And so it does, but hardly on a direct route. That this is serious stuff is clear to us from a prologue in which a mysterious phone call causes a young girl, Tamar, to shave off her hair and hit the streets with her guitar—and, of course, her Golden Lab. The two intercut stories, taking place two months apart, lead the film into the urban underground of Jerusalem and an Olvier Twist-ish tale of in which runaway street musicians are used to mask a drug ring. A bit dark for young audiences but tame for fans of adult-oriented thrillers, Someone to Run With nonetheless brings more to the table than it omits. (MF) Mon 6pm, Thu 6pm.

STEEL TOES

Inspired by seeing a gay friend attacked by skinheads, Canadian actor David Gow wrote a play about a Jewish lawyer who must put aside his personal feelings to fulfill his professional and ethical obligations when he is assigned to defend a young skinhead who kicked an immigrant to death. Cherry Docs was well-received in regional performances, and Gow decided to make it into a film. He scored a coup when David Strathairn, who had appeared in the play in Philadelphia, agreed to reprise his role as lawyer Danny Dunkleman. (Strathairn had just been nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night and Good Luck.) Unfortunately, the retitled Steel Toes doesn’t transfer well to the screen. Adapting what was a one-set, two-character play, Gow expands the story too little, giving Dunkleman a backstory of marital problems that is distractingly vague. Worst of all, he favors tight close-ups on actors who don’t seem to have been told to tone down performances honed for live theater. Andrew Walker’s physicality as the skinhead seems overwrought on film, while Strathairn, an actor I had thought incapable of a bad performance, twitches like Anthony Perkins on a bad night. (MF) Tue 6pm, Wed 3:30pm.

SWEET MUD

Awarded “Best Picture” by the Israeli Film Academy and the World Cinema jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival, this semi-autobiographical drama is based on writer-director Dror Shaul’s youth on a kibbutz in the 1970s and 1980s. It’s anything but a rosy memory, taking the system to task for failing the needs of members whose ordinary frailties were less than the communistic ideal. Set in the year leading up to the bar mitzvah of its protagonist, the film shows 12-year-old Dvir living in a youth home where children are raised so as not to be a distraction to the work of their parents. His father died under circumstances no one wants to talk about, his older brother can’t wait to start military service so he can get off the farm, and his mother has recently returned from an institution that seems to have done little to help her mental problems. While acknowledging the appeal of life in what was designed as a rural utopia, Sweet Mud (the title is more literally translated “Crazy Earth”) is a powerful look at how social ideals can break when they fail to bend for the humanity of the people who comprise them. (MF) Mon 8:30pm, Wed 8:30 pm.

“WHERE NEON GOES TO DIE,” “CALIFORNIA SCHMEER”

This double bill takes two short looks at aspects of the Jewish culture in the United States. “Where Neon Goes to Die” takes its title from Lenny Bruce’s description of Miami Beach, in its heyday the unofficial retirement community of American Jews. That heyday, the film point out, came only after a Supreme Court ruling that forced many of the area’s hotel and apartment building owners to end an open system of discrimination under which “Gentiles only” signs were the norm. Much of the city was built from the ground up in 1926 after a particularly nasty hurricane, which is why it was such a goldmine of Art Deco style. Many of those buildings were almost destroyed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the city council declared Miami’s South Beach a “blighted area” in order to be able to move the elderly out and the tourists in. Filmmaker David Weintraub dug up lots of memorable archival footage showing the area in its heyday, when Yiddish theaters and neighborhood singalongs were the norm. “California Shmeer” asks the question, “When is a bagel no longer a bagel?. Everyone asked seems to have a different answer, from those who consider cinnamon raisin bagels to be a culinary to crime to those who ask, in return, “What’s a shmeer?” Better make dinner plans before the screening—you’ll be hungry by the time it’s over. (MF) Mon 1pm.

THE YEAR MY PARENTS WENT ON VACATION

When young Mauro’s parents hurriedly and mysteriously deposit him outside his grandfather’s Sao Paulo, Brazil apartment in 1970, they tell him they’ll return in time for the World Cup soccer matches. Mauro (Michel Joelsas), who seems to be around 10, is a soccer zealot, but this promise doesn’t really assuage his resentment and disorientation. And things quickly get worse. His grandparent turns out to be unavailable; his funeral is scheduled for that afternoon. The angry, confused lad gradually allows himself to be assisted by members of the working-class Jewish neighborhood, especially Schlomo (Germano Haiut), an elderly observant bachelor who overcomes his reluctance to take any responsibility for this sullen, disrespectful boy. The relationship between the two is conveyed in a largely unsentimentalized fashion by director Cao Hamburger. Mauro’s outlook and personality will be changed by this association and his increasing involvement with the other neighbors. He’ll also be sharply impacted by the harsher facts of 1970s Brazilian life, primarily the sometimes brutal (US-supported) military dictatorship, which is never directly referred to, but which is the major mover in Mauro’s changing circumstances. Hamburger somehow managed to work both methodically and fluidly. He presents scenes of a durable network of human interactions, while only suggesting the repression and mostly unspecified peril around it. His film has a quiet, attractively human quality, even near the end when it becomes a little less reticent about the political environment in which it takes place. (GS) Sat 8pm, Tue 3:30pm