Jacob Burns

"A  testament to the power of movies in achieving not just the illusion but also the reality of reconciliation and atonement." (Boston Phoenix)

In his first feature, Haar documents the trip that he and his mother took to Siberia in search of her father, a Red Army hero who abandoned his wife when she was pregnant—and was never heard from again. Filmed with amazing candor, this revelatory documentary examines an emotional reconciliation after a lifetime of heartbreak. Special Mention, Jerusalem Film Festival.
Interview about this film with director Ido Haar on the JBFC's YouTube channel

Q&A with International Filmmaker-in-Residence Ido Haar, followed by a reception in the Jane Peck Gallery

“(Untitled) takes on the New York art and music worlds in one smart and funny swoop.” (LA Times)

Jonathan Parker’s clever art-world satire (Untitled) covers the New York art and music scene in a shrewd, vivid portrayal which at once balances "observational farce and heightened reality" (LA Times). Featuring a wonderful cast, including Adam Goldberg (Two Days In Paris, Saving Private Ryan ) as a brooding, neurotic composer and a glowing Marley Shelton as an unpredictable gallerist, co-writers  Parker and Catherine DiNapoli affectionately capture their impassioned struggles with artistic and romantic conflicts while lampooning the contemporary art scene.

"A tart, brilliantly acted fable of life’s little cosmic difficulties." (Chicago Tribune)

The Coen Brothers' (No Country for Old Men) signature humor and cinematic imagination take on questions of faith, familial responsibility, delinquent behavior, dental phenomena, academia, mortality, and Judaism in their hot awaited new film, A Serious Man. It’s the story of Larry Gopnik, a suburban Jewish physics professor who is plagued with a dysfunctional family, a vindictive neighbor, and a grade-grubbing foreign exchange student who is threatening his long-nurtured chance for tenure. In a moment of existential desperation, he turns to three rabbis for help. Can anyone help him cope with his afflictions and become a righteous person—a mensch—a serious man?

"An eye-opening portrait ... it leaves you off balance, in the best possible way." -  (LA Times)

Recipient of Sundance's World Cinema Jury Prize, Chilean director Sebastián Silva's complex, comedic drama is at once "both riveting character study and corrosive social commentary" (LA Times). Based in part on events from his childhood, Silva's The Maid deftly explores traditions of class division while dissecting the tensions among the members of a comfortably middle-class Latin American family and their live-in maid of 23 years. Catalina Saavedra, winner of the Sundance Special Jury Prize for Acting in the role of the long-suffering servant Raquel, delivers a remarkable, humanizing performance as a bitter and introverted woman with homicidal tendencies.