This year's Long Island Jewish Film Festival features powerful personal stories

The fourth annual Long Island Jewish Film Festival returns this week with an eight-film lineup that focuses on documentaries but also includes comedies, a silent gem and a lesser-seen classic from the 1970s.

"Powerful personal stories" is this year’s unifying theme, according to returning programmer David Schwartz. "It was good to see such a strong batch of documentaries this year," he said. "And maybe one or two of these films will wind up in theaters, but a lot of times they don’t. This might be the only chance to see these films in a theater."

Here are several highlights from the festival.

SAPIRO V. FORD: THE JEW WHO SUED HENRY FORD (Thursday, 7 p.m.; Friday, 4 p.m.)

The world-famous automaker was also a virulent antisemite whose newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, became his megaphone. Aaron Sapiro, a lawyer with a checkered past, boldly sued Ford for defamation in 1927. Gaylen Ross, the film's director, will hold a post-screening Q&A in person.

ONCE UPON MY MOTHER

(Friday, 7 p.m.; Sunday, 1 p.m.) Leïla Bekhti plays a Sephardic Jewish Parisienne whose son is struggling to come of age with a clubfoot during the 1960s. Every year, one movie becomes a hit on the Jewish festival circuit, Schwartz said, "and this is that film." Written and directed by Ken Scott.

THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ (Saturday, 1 p.m.) Richard Dreyfuss plays a brash young Montrealer looking to make his mark. Ted Kotcheff’s comedy earned glowing reviews on its release in 1974 — "It’s not likely that he’ll ever top his performance," Pauline Kael wrote of Dreyfuss — but it screens very rarely today. Based on the novel by Mordecai Richler.

MY UNDERGROUND MOTHER (Saturday, 4 p.m.; Monday, 7 p.m.) Her mother fled Poland in the 1930s to become part of a radical Jewish group in Palestine — or so director Merisa Fox believed until she looked deeper into the story. "You’re not going to be happy with what you find," a relative warned, but Fox eventually produced this documentary, which The Guardian called "an edge-of-your-seat experience." Fox will attend the screening in person.

A LETTER TO DAVID (Saturday, 7 p.m.; Monday, 4 p.m.) David Cunio was abducted during the terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and held captive by Hamas for more than two years. Eerily, he had starred with his twin brother, Eitan, in a drama about an abduction 10 years earlier. Tom Shoval, the director of that film and this one, shifts between the past and present to tell a story of grief and hope.

HUNGRY HEARTS (Sunday, 4 p.m.)

E. Mason Hopper’s 1922 silent, shot partly on New York’s Lower East Side, focuses on the Levins, émigrés from Eastern Europe trying to adjust to a new world. Based on the short stories of Anzia Yezierska. Live piano accompaniment by Makia Matsumura, whom Schwartz calls "one of the best."

THE LAST SPY (Tuesday, 7 p.m.)

Here’s a real-life figure straight out of a thriller: Peter Sichel, a German Jew who fled the Nuremberg Race Laws, joined the U.S. Army after Pearl Harbor, globe-hopped with the CIA during the peak of the Cold War, and finally settled down to become a vintner. (That’s his name on your bottle of Blue Nun.) Directed by Katharina Otto-Bernstein.