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WEST HARTFORD – Twenty-two award-winning features, documentary and short-subject films from ten countries will highlight the 16th Annual Mandell JCC Hartford Jewish Film Festival, which opens on March 17 and will run through March 27. The films will be screened at five venues in Bloomfield, Hartford and West Hartford.
This year, the festival also presents Connecticut’s first “ReelAbilities, The New York Disabilities Film Festival,” in partnership with The Saul Schottenstein Foundation B. Presented on Sunday, March 25, this one-day film marathon – general and Jewish – celebrates the art and expression of all people with disabilities and features guest presenters and experts.

The Hartford Jewish Film Festival opens Mar. 17

The festival will open on March 17 with a gala reception accompanied by the screening of the love story Remembrance, and will close on March 27 with the film Tango – A Story with Jews, followed by a tango concert and dance party with The Hartt School, University of Hartford. Other special festival events include an encore screening of The Rescuers; a Muslim-Jewish Teen Screen event with young cast members and the director of “David – The Movie;” a Jewish soul music performance and kosher nosh with The Klezmatics – On Holy Ground; a Shalom Sesame Family Flicks program and a Senior Screen matinee with entertainment and lunch; a talk with Canadian Jewish Book Award winner Alison Pick and Ivan Backer, a Hartford resident rescued in The Kindertransport mission, at a screening of Nicky’s Family; and a screening of Standing Silent, presented by journalist Phil Jacobs and director Scott Rosenfeld.
Other festival films include:  Ahead of Time, All Day, Crime After Crime, Honeymoon Suite, In Heaven Underground, Kaddish for a Friend, Lea and Daria, Mitzvah on the Street (Shalom Sesame),  Restoration, Shooting Beauty, The Flood (Mabul), The Tailor, The Tenth Man, Warrior Champions – From Baghdad to Beijing and White Balance.
The festival is presented by the Mandell Jewish Community Center with the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies and The Hartt School, University of Hartford.
For ticket information and/or a Festival brochure call (860) 236-4571 or the Festival box office at (860) 231-6316, or visit the festival website, www.hjff.org.
The 2012HJFF iPhone App, developed by iDoTouch.com, can be downloaded for free from the iTunes App Store. Users can view schedule, photos, sneak previews and trailers, maintain favorites, call or email the box office and share favorites via email and Facebook.