DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Sumo practice in Erez Tadmor and Sharon Maymon’s ‘A Matter of Size,’ playing tonight and tomorrow at the Washington Jewish Film Festival.Washington Jewish Film Festival
Tonight marks the opening of the 20th iteration of the DC Jewish Community Center’s annual film festival, with the mid-Atlantic premiere of A Matter of Size, an Israeli film about a group of men who, after many failed attempts to lose weight, decide to embrace their extra weight and form a sumo wrestling club. The Festival continues for ten more days after tonight, with screenings at eight venues around town, with over 60 features from 20 different countries.
Other festival highlights include the presentation of the WJFF Visionary Award to German filmmaker Michael Verhoeven; a screening of the award winning Argentinean film Camera Obscura; Ajami, a film about Jews, Muslims, and Christians coexisting in one neighborhood, and Israel’s Academy Award submission for this year; the North American premiere of Marcel Reich-Ranicki – The Author of Himself, which will feature a panel discussion after the movie; the East Coast premiere of one of Patrick Swayze’s final films, Jump!; and the festival’s closing night feature The Gift to Stalin, about a young Jewish orphan in Russia during Stalin’s reign. And that’s just scratching the surface of a festival loaded with interesting titles.
View the trailer for A Matter of Size.
The festival begins tonight at the Embassy of France and continues through December 13. See the full schedule here.
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For the third year, the Brazilian Embassy and the Rio International Film Festival are presenting a festival of Brazilian films in D.C. The 2009 festival kicked off last night at American University’s Greenberg Theater with Brazil’s Academy Award submission for this year, Salve Geral, and there are more than a half dozen remaining programs between tonight and the festival’s close on Sunday. Each feature will be preceded by a short film. Most of the films are brand new, and receiving their local premieres through the festival, except for a special 50th anniversary screening of Black Orpheus, which screens Sunday afternoon at the National Gallery.
Continues through Sunday, with most shows at American University’s Greenberg Theater, and one screening at the National Gallery on Sunday. See a full description of the programs and a calendar here.
