Movie Blog: Still Time To Catch Jewish Film Festival

Last night may have brought a screening of its centerpiece -- Supporting Characters, starring Tarik Lowe and Girls' Alex Karpovsky -- but the Jewish Film Festival is still far from over at the Sabes Jewish Community Center theater.

In fact, screenings continue through a week from Sunday. Here are five of the other highlights for you to consider, all of which are are making their Minnesota premieres:

No Place on Earth (March 9, 8 p.m.)

Absolutely ravishing images distinguish director Janet Tobias' historical documentary about a group of families who, during WWII, hide away from Ukranian authorities working with the Nazis. They delve into a network of caves that, for 544 brutal days, becomes their secret home -- as the festival notes say, "the longest recorded underground survival in human history."

Paris Manhattan (March 10, 7 p.m.)

Funny, Woody Allen just reignited his career by heading over to Paris, and now it seems Parisian women just want to hop over to the Big Apple. Poor deluded Alice Taglioni just wants to be Annie Hall to her own private Woody Allen, which proves a problem for her matchmaking parents, who set her up with a Mr. Right who it seems just can't match up to Alice's neurotic aspirations.

Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir (March 13, 7 p.m.)

Someday, someone's going to make the definitive biopic of Roman Polanski's turbulent life. But until then, this documentary will serve as a counterpart to the acclaimed but controversial 2008 documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. You may know Film Memoir director Laurent Bouzereau from some of the stellar supplementary features he has provided for a number of special edition DVDs, including some of Brian De Palma's best efforts.

Melting Away (March 14, 7 p.m.)

The pain of parents' rejection haunts the life of a cross-dresser, who returns into the fold when his father is diagnosed with cancer. The situation couldn't be more jerry-rigged to elicit tears, but Melting Away -- reportedly Israel's first film to deal with the topic of childhood transsexualism -- has been earning plaudits at nearly every LGBT film festival around the globe.

The Day I Saw Your Heart (March 16, 8 p.m.)

Inglourious Basterds' Mélanie Laurent stars in director Jennifer Devoldere's quirky comedy (and you know it's quirky because Laurent wears an earflap hat) about a woman unable to commit to any prospective relationship scenarios. Again, as with Paris Manhattan, perhaps the French are just a little bit too in love with Woody Allen-style dysfunction.