Two festival films examine opposite ends of the Jewish experience—a key demo for the fest as 70% of Beverly Hills residents identify as Jewish. Michael Moshe Dahan’s genre-bending Yes Repeat No is, according to reviewer Federico Furzan, “a conceptual feature that doesn’t resemble anything you’ve ever seen before. It’s bold, critical, and very, very tense. And it also seems like the only way to address the reality of its subject.” In the film, three actors audition to play the assassinated Palestinian-Jewish actor and activist Juliano Mer-Khamis, a former IDF paratrooper who defiantly identified as “100% Palestinian and 100% Jewish.” During a VERY tense rehearsal meant to determine which of them is most suited to authentically portray the activist, the three Julianos find their sense of self fractured and disrupted. Furzan concludes, “We get glimpses of Mer-Khamis acting in the 1984 film The Little Drummer Girl, and the actors follow the orders of a director that implies there’s a code hidden in the actor’s role. This is one of the only connections the film has with reality in its meta-story.” Yes Repeat No rewards careful viewing and plays April 20th.
At the other end of the spectrum lies Matthew Mishory’s philanthropy/water science doc Who Are The Marcuses? which Film Threat called “this year’s great documentary” when it premiered at the Newport Beach Film Festival last fall. It’s since hit first-run festivals like Santa Barbara and Cleveland—as well as screenings at COP 27 and the UN-affiliated World Water Film Festival on its way to BHFF, where it screens Saturday, April 22nd. Who Are The Marcuses? reveals a mysterious and unlikely pair of philanthropists: the unassuming Long Island couple and Holocaust refugees Lottie and Howard Marcus, whose half-a-billion-dollar gift to Ben-Gurion University in Israel—the single largest charitable donation to the State of Israel in its history—inspired peace and climate action through water technology. No less a personage than Warren Buffet, a featured subject of the doc, called it “a wonderful film recounting the remarkable tale of Israel, water, and philanthropy. I am proud to have played a small part.”
Who Are The Marcuses?
“this year’s great documentary”
Finally, with Bare Metal, a film that has coincidentally trailed Who Are The Marcuses through the festival circuit, filmmaker Brandon Gries reached out to the Marcuses camp to point out the serendipity was too close for coincidence. ”Bare Metal is my first film,” he tells them. “I am not a professional filmmaker; I build data centers for a living. Nonetheless, I was inspired to make a film last year, and the stars aligned to enable me to realize that long-held dream. I am now trying to drive transformation in green finance between companies at the opposite ends of long value chains to accelerate decarbonization. In addition to not being a professional filmmaker, I do not work professionally in finance; I am an engineer. So, I continue to seek out a lot of expertise.” With the help of co-directors Brandon Freng and Jonathan Shoemaker, Gries’ film details the data center industry’s work to reduce their carbon footprint to lower carbon emissions and help save the world. Gries concludes, “As a returned Peace Corps volunteer, the message of service to others in your film is one close to heart for me.”
The Festival also features panels, and parties after each night’s screenings at Hollywood hot spots like Aya, Members and Raspoutine, and concludes with a gala black-tie Awards ceremony at the Roosevelt Hotel featuring honors for festival films, the Golden Palm Award, The Digital Evolution Ace Award, and more.
The Beverly Hills Film Festival: April 19-22. Tickets range from $20 for individual screening blocks to $550 for the Platinum Pass, which confers access to all the films, events, panels, and Awards ceremony.
