Windsor Jewish festival opens Monday

The Windsor Jewish Film Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary by screening two 2012 Oscar-nominated films, Footnote (Joseph Cedar) – opening Monday night – and In Darkness (Agnieszka Holland) – closing the event May 3. All 11 films (in 10 programs) screen at Devonshire  Mall’s Cineplex Odeon, the annual festival site.....Footnote, from Israel, which has gathered rave reviews, is the story of the competition between a father and son, two professors of Talmudic Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In Darkness, a Canadian-Polish, German co-production, tells the true story of Jews in the Polish city of Lvov who hid in sewers and water mains for more than a year to avoid being captured by the Nazis.....The festival’s line-up is particularly strong this year, with productions from France, Holland, Israel and the United States. These include Sarah’s Key (2010, Gilles Paquet-Brenner) with Kristin Scott Thomas as an American journalist married to a French man whose family holds a secret from World War II. Sholom Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness (2011, Joseph Dorman) looks like a fascinating insight into this Jewish storyteller and mythmaker of the ages. Lenin in October (2010, Evgeny Ruman) is about a couple who want to open a restaurant but to get money from an uncle’s will  they must erect a statue of his hero Vladimir Lenin; it looks a hoot.....Festival spokesman Stuart Selby says the fest tends not to attract many people outside Windsor’s small Jewish community. That’s a shame because these films transcend religion and culture.....By the way, the fest has no relationship to the Detroit Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival, now in its 14th year, and screening movies also until May 3. That festival originally organized the Windsor fest as a satellite. But several years ago the Windsor group went their own way because Canadian copyright rules required they order from domestic distributors.....More festival info available at www.jewishwindsor.org