Jewish International Film Festival 2025
October 19 – November 26, 2025
Full programme here.
The Jewish International Film Festival returns to cinema screens from October 19 – November 26, highlighting a selection of the best new Jewish-themed films to Australian audiences.
JIFF kicks off with the hilarious and fast-paced comedy, Bad Shabbos, about a Shabbat dinner between future in-laws, meeting for the first time, where everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. Celebrate the opening of JIFF on Sunday October 19 at Classic Cinemas, Elsternwick, with live music, drinks and falafels from 3:00pm before the Australian Premiere of Bad Shabbos.
Tickets now on sale: https://www.jiff.com.au/events/opening-night-bad-shabbos
The Queer Sessions
The Ring
“It’s the relationships among the three leads that carry the movie forward.” – The Jerusalem Post
“A highly emotional film. Exciting, funny and above all, a fascinating life story.” – Letterboxd user
Australian Premiere
Arnon is a devoutly religious man who has a close bond with his mother, Violetta, but a fraught relationship with his daughter, Alma, since he doesn’t approve that she’s a lesbian. When Violetta’s health deteriorates, Arnon sets out to her old hometown of Budapest to try and find a gold ring that saved her life during World War II.
Despite the tension between father and daughter, Arnon asks Alma to join him and help with the search. Alma is initially resistant, but her closeness with her grandmother convinces her to concede. Can father and daughter find the ring in the bustling city of Budapest? And will they be able to repair their relationship along the way?
The Ring is based on co-director and lead actor Adir Miller’s own family story. A well-known stand-up comedian in Israel, Miller brings a delicate balance of comedy and tragedy to this role.
Pink Lady
“An excellent movie that tells a complex, moving story… The cast is wonderful.” – The Jerusalem Post
“A very urgent film.” – Cineuropa
“A story of female self-discovery and emancipation.” – Eye for Film
Australian Premiere
To others in her ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Jerusalem, Bati’s life looks ideal. She’s married to Lazer and together, they have three beautiful children. Behind closed doors, however, the young couple’s marriage is strained, and their lives are rocked when Lazer is blackmailed with photos capturing his secret affair with another man. Desperate to protect her family from scandal, Bati tries everything to seduce her husband back to their marital bed. But in her struggles with this crisis, Bati makes some surprising discoveries about her own sexuality and desires.
Nir Bergman (co-creator of the series In Treatment) won the Best Directing prize for Pink Lady at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival where it had its world premiere. Screenwriter Mindi Ehrlich brings lived experience from her upbringing in a Haredi community, telling this nuanced and compassionate story from a woman’s perspective with moments of lightness softening the drama.
Come Closer
“A sexy, modern and uncommonly introspective debut.” – Variety
“One of the most beautiful and visceral portrayals of grief and the ways we try to make peace with loss.” – Loud and Clear
Australian Premiere*
When Eden’s beloved younger brother Nati dies suddenly, she’s completely shattered by grief. Although she tries to numb the pain with hard partying and a dead-end affair with her married boss, nothing helps. Until she discovers a love note to Nati from Maya, a girlfriend he’d kept secret from her.
Eden strikes up a friendship with Maya. As the two young women lean on each other in their heartache, their relationship morphs into something altogether new and unexpected, even romantic. Eden and Maya must navigate their complex connection – is this a healthy way of coping, or simply a convenient replacement for Nati?
Writer/director Tom Nesher, daughter of multi award-winning Israeli director Avi Nesher, based the story on her own experience of her brother’s tragic death. An exuberant, sensitive exploration of love, loss and obsession, Come Closer swept the Israeli Oscars in 2024, winning Best Film, Director, Lead Actress and Editing.
*Excluding Sydney
