Atlanta Jewish Film Festival to grow in every way in 2012

The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, the city's largest annual movie gathering, will continue to grow in 2012, adding more theaters, more days, more titles and more screenings.

The AJFF, which drew 26,000 viewers last year, is announcing Tuesday exclusively in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that it will add two more days for its 12th annual event, to be held Feb. 8-29. That will allow it to go from 99 screenings in 2011 to 117 in 2012 and from a 66-title lineup to 70.

The festival is adding days at its new north metro venue and returning east Cobb theater, United Artists North Point Market 8 and Georgia Theatre Company Merchants Walk, and adding an intown location, United Artists Tara Cinemas 4, to go along with Atlantic Station Stadium 16. Lefont Sandy Springs returns as the festival's headquarters venue.

The expanded days and added cinema means the fest will be able to offer as many as four screenings scattered across the metro area of its most popular titles, many of which in previous years have sold out mere days after going on sale.

"Movies have always been an escape in difficult times, and now more than ever the film festival provides a sort of safe haven, a place for people to come and have their souls enriched through film and storytelling," said Kenny Blank, the AJFF's executive director. "And I think that's why in the face of economic downturn, and all the other difficulties happening in the world, the festival continues to defy expectations and thrive."

Nearly a quarter of audiences attending the AJFF, the second-largest Jewish film fest in the country (after San Francisco's), are non-Jewish, taking advantage of a relatively rare opportunity in Atlanta to view a cross section of new international films, sometimes only loosely Judaic in theme. This year, the slate will be drawn from 17 countries, including Israel and the U.S., of course, but also Bulgaria, France, Germany and other nations.

The opening-night feature, Feb. 8 at the Fox Theatre, will be the Austria-Luxembourg film "My Best Enemy," a World War II-set drama/tragicomedy about the scion of a family of Viennese art dealers that owns a priceless Michelangelo sketch who is double-crossed when his best friend becomes a Nazi.

Other AJFF highlights:

• "Rabies," billed as the first Israeli horror film, will be the Young Professionals Night presentation, Feb. 9 at Regal Cinemas Atlantic Station.

• A track of five films addressing Jewish-Muslim relations includes "David," a feature that examines the similarities and differences between the faiths through the eyes of a Muslim boy who wanders into a yeshiva and is mistaken for one of the Jewish students; and "Free Men," a drama telling the story of Muslim freedom fighters in the French resistance movement.

• "Nicky's Family," a documentary that recounts the story of Sir Nicholas Winton, the "British Schindler" who saved the lives of more than 600 Czech and Slovak children during WWII, is one in a loose grouping of films that focus on the moral courage of "righteous persons."

• The fest will also pay tribute to two film classics on the occasion of major anniversaries, "Sophie's Choice" (30th) and "Dirty Dancing" (25th). As well, it will give a 75th anniversary screening to the restored black-and-white Yiddish musical "The Cantor's Son."