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Festival Audience Votes Its Favorites
Two Awards Given at 2010 Boston Jewish Film Festival

The audience at this year’s 22nd annual Boston Jewish Film Festival has voted its favorites. In total, the Festival screened 36 films from 15 countries. The Festival’s audience voted in two categories, Best Feature Fiction and Best Documentary Feature.

Award-winners are as follows:
- Best Feature Fiction: Saviors in the Night (Unter Bauern – Retter in der Nacht), directed by Ludi Boeken (Germany/France, 2009, 95 min., 35mm) had its Massachusetts Premiere screening in this year’s Festival.

Dutch director and producer Ludi Boeken’s newest feature depicts farmers in Germany’s Westphalia who hid Marga Spiegel, her husband Menne and their daughter Karin from 1943 until 1945. The farmers humbly hid the family members, without a sense of their own bravery, even as the growing Nazi Youth Movement increased their risk. Marga Spiegel’s 1965 memoir helped memorialize them as Righteous Gentiles in Yad VaShem Living Holocaust Memorial. Well-known German actors Veronica Ferres and Margarita Broich give powerful performances.

U.S. distributor of Saviors in the Night is Menemsha Films (www.menemshafilms.com)

- Best Documentary Feature: My So-Called Enemy by Lisa Gossels (USA, 2010, 90 minutes, video) had its New England Premiere screening in this year’s Festival.

Emmy Award-winning Lisa Gossels (The Children of Chabannes, 1999 Festival) returns with My So-Called Enemy. This Wayland native follows six young Palestinian and Israeli women who meet as teens in a 2002 U.S. women’s leadership program, Building Bridges for Peace. Their experience dramatically complicates the next seven years of their lives. Gal, a Jewish Israeli, and Rezan, a Christian Palestinian, find their friendship especially challenged when Gal enters the Israeli army. My So-Called Enemy depicts the painstaking effort behind even the smallest steps toward peace.

My So-Called Enemy is a Good Egg Production (www.mysocalledenemy.com)



Sony Creative Software has generously donated the awards, given to each film’s director, in the form of Sony Vegas Pro 10 film editing software.

Jpeg photos are available for each of this year’s winning films.

Previous Boston Jewish Film Festival Award Winners
Prior winners for Best Feature Fiction:
2009 – Eli & Ben, by Ori Ravid
2008 – Noodle, by Ayelet Menahemi
2007 – Beaufort (Bufor) by Joseph Cedar
2006 – Ira and Abby, directed by Robert Cary
2005 – Live and Become, directed by Radu Mihaileanu
2004 - Wondrous Oblivion, directed by Paul Morrison
2003 – Yossi and Jagger, directed by Eytan Fox
2002 - Monsieur Batignole, directed by Gérard Jugnot

Prior winners for Best Feature Documentary:
2009 – Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt with Nazis, by Gaylen Ross
2008 – Holy Land Hardball, by Brett Rapkin and Erik Keston
2007– Praying with Lior, by Ilana Trachtman
2006 – The Rape of Europa, directed by Richard Berge, Nicole Newnham and Bonni Cohen
2005 – 39 Pounds of Love, directed by Dani Menkin
2004 – Watermarks, directed by Yaron Zilberman
2003 – Thunder in Guyana, directed by Suzanne Wasserman
2002 – Strange Fruit, directed by Joel Katz