Escape From Room 18

John Daly, an ex-neo-Nazi skinhead, fled to Israel after his own gang attempted to murder him for being Jewish. Years later he receives an e-mail from someone in his long forgotten past.

Kevin Connell, a former friend and fellow ex-neo-Nazi is on a mission to change his own life and make amends for his past. He invites John to meet him in Eastern Europe to discover first hand the effects of what they both practiced and preached.

Suffering from PTSD and a brain tumor John is reluctant at first. Is this another attempt on his life? Or is this actually a man trying to better himself and make amends for the pain he caused so many people so many years ago?

Code of Silence

Code of Silence follows the parallel journeys of a fervently Orthodox Jewish father and his now-secular son, after the son Manny breaks the code of silence in Melbourne’s Orthodox community and goes public with his story of being sexually abused as a school student.

Manny Waks claims he was abused by an Orthodox Jewish security guard, who also taught boys karate, at the Yeshivah Centre in Melbourne. Now Manny is demanding his abuser be brought to justice, and the rabbis and Chabad leaders who tried to cover it up, are brought to account.

His father Zephaniah joins forces with his son, but soon finds he has been virtually excommunicated for breaking an ancient Jewish law forbidding Jews from informing secular authorities about other Jews.

We see how father and son split this tightly-knit, powerful Jewish community as we open the door into their insular world of study and duty, charity and faith, power and piety.

Will Manny get justice in court? Will the rabbis be held to account? And, what price will the father and son pay for blowing the whistle?

 

Code of Silence from Sideways Film on Vimeo.

Breaking the Silence

Breaking the Silence follows the journey of Manny Waks who was, until recently, the only survivor of child sexual abuse within Melbourne’s Orthodox Jewish community to speak publicly.

This is the dramatic follow up to the Walkley Award winning Code of Silence. 

Breaking the Silence begins with Manny Waks as he gives evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, during which two ultra-Orthodox Jewish institutions are accused of covering-up and protecting perpetrators in the 1980s and 90s. 

Over two explosive weeks inside Melbourne’s County Court, viewers will witness, for the first time, those rabbis and officials accused of the cover-ups take the stand and be grilled. For the first time, it is also revealed that Manny was not the only member of the family who was abused; Manny’s father Zephaniah Waks reveals two other sons were abused by a Yeshivah Centre teacher, David Kramer in the 1990’s. He had tried to have the abuse handled by community leaders but was subject to an ancient code of silence that forbids Jews from speaking about the allegations involving other Jews, to the police.

The result was that Zephaniah and his wife were virtually excommunicated and feeling isolated, they decided to relocate to Israel. Now his other son Yanky agrees to speak on camera for the first time.

After the hearings, Manny travels to the United States to confront one of the two men who he claims abused him. The film’s climax follows Manny to Los Angeles, where he meets a convicted pedophile who was given a suspended sentence for abusing AVB in Sydney in the 1980s. It’s a powerful moment between victim and abuser that delivers an unexpected conclusion.

Will Manny’s confrontation with the man he claims abused him give him peace of mind? And will his meeting with the convicted pedophile give him a crucial sense of resolution?

Breaking the Silence from Sideways Film on Vimeo.

J Street: The Art of the Possible

J Street is on the frontlines of the world’s most “intractable” problem. An upstart lobby group in Washington, D.C., J Street dares to assert what to many seems obvious: that a two-state solution is Israel’s only future, and any peace deal will require robust American participation. It sees itself playing David to AIPAC, the Israel Lobby’s Goliath, and, less than five years old, has been making surprising gains.

With full access to the inside workings of a lobby group struggling to represent the centre ground of Jewish American thought, this documentary tracks J Street as it attempts to change what it means to be pro-Israel in America. We see their missteps and their triumphs as they push the Obama administration to take an active role in negotiating a two-state solution, fend off accusations of harbouring ‘anti-Israel’ objectives and gain influence among America’s Jewish population.

In this urgent political story told with the intimacy of cinema vérité, we feel the pulse of an organization, taking viewers to high-level strategy meetings, and long nights on the road. It is here that our characters come to life and the J Street story unfolds. J Street: The Art of the Possible is at once a gripping story about the desperate need for a two-state solution, and a captivating glimpse at the role of Lobbyists in the American political process.

The Manor

Shawney calls himself a filmmaker, but he’s been a strip-club manager for longer. When he was six his father bought “The Manor”, a small-town strip club.

Thirty years later, the family’s lifestyle has got the better of them. While his 400-pound father prepares for stomach-reduction surgery, his 85-pound mother has her own complicated relationship with food. Shawney’s role as struggling filmmaker and outcast son provides a rare glimpse into a family facing the consequences of their livelihood and dependence.

Told with humor and frankness, The Manor is an intimate portrait of people struggling to call themselves a family.

“There’s more than a faint echo of ‘Grey Gardens’ in this Canadian-gothic portrait of an unusual family business.”
Variety

The Manor… [rises] to the ranks of some of the best family portrait documentaries.”
Indiewire

“in the vein of Capturing the Friedmans and Crazy Love”
Filmmaker Magazine 

“78 minutes rich with character, incident, friction, deadpan humour and voyeuristic thrills.”
The Globe & Mail

***Opening Night Film – Hot Docs***
***Official Competition – Karlovy Vary – Winner, Honorable Mention Best Documentary***
***Official Competition Opening Night – Zurich***
***Official Competition – Woodstock – Winner, Best Editing***
***Official Selection – Bergen***
***Official Selection – Goteborg***
***Official Selection – DOCNYC***
***Official Selection – Antenna***
***Official Selection – DMZ***

A Film About Races

We follow Welshman Paul Duddridge as, with the help of some of the world’s greatest writers, thinkers and professors, he pushes aside society’s taboos to find out what “race” really is. Along the way he attempts to solve the Middle East peace crisis, buys hundreds of twinkies and desperately tries to find contestants to join him for a mini-Olympics staged in Los Angeles where teams are split by race rather than nationality.

There is a serious point to the seemingly irreverent approach: if we can’t easily define race, why can it sometimes seem so easy to define racism?

Filmed on location in Los Angeles, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Ohio, and the UK – “A Film About Races” is an entertaining exploration of the common myths and misconceptions about race.

Parallel Worlds

As the world prays for a breakthrough at the latest round of Middle-East peace talks, a film that shows the conflict from the inside, and why the talks will fail.

Filmed during the 2009 Gaza War, three conflicted, Jewish-Israelis, navigate toward their differing visions of Israel’s future: and thereby the future of the conflict itself.

The Teacher: Erez, an ideological settler, founded two of the largest youth movements in Israel – he plans to train a generation of hyper-nationalist, pro-military leaders to shape Israeli society in the decades to come.

The Peace Activist: Mihal runs a Jewish/Arab peace group planning to bridge the ethnic divide when at it’s most pronounced – Israeli Independence Day. To Israel’s Jews a day of great celebration but to Palestinians known simply, as The Nakba: The Catastrophe. The group must hold together as the war rages on and find a way to accept each other’s frank confessions of mutual suspicion and a thirst for revenge.

The Photographer: At 23 years old, Mor finds herself straddling the fault lines of Israeli society. Recently atheist but raised religious orthodox and ultra-nationalistic, her love for Israel is all that’s left of her traditional upbringing, but as she begins to see what life can be like for Israel’s Arab population, her faith is tested once again.

Instead of the endlessly rehearsed contestable facts, this film focuses on the atmosphere in which they are created. From mortars raining down in Southern Israel to the collision of pro and anti-war marches in Tel Aviv, this is the story of five months in the life of the Arab/Israeli conflict as seen from the streets. And the lives of three unique individuals reacting to the history unfolding around: of lives lived in exceptional conditions, and the beliefs that crystallise under the intense pressure of life at the centre of our geo-political world.