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The top Jewish (and Jew-ish) movies of 2022

By Irene Katz Connelly and PJ Grisar

This week, we're reviewing the best 2022 had to offer. Today: The films that helped us celebrate and question Jewish identity, rethink the art of storytelling and see the world with fresh eyes.

2022 was a reset year for cinema. Seemingly taking their cues from those meme-worthy Nicole Kidman AMC advertisements, major directors made movies that gushed about the transformative power of — well, movies.

In The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg paid homage to his medium’s dreamy, dangerous potential. In Nope, Jordan Peele unpacked the predatory nature of the camera lens (by way of a Spielbergian extraterrestrial creature).

Other filmmakers wrestled with the nature of storytelling itself. The Israeli film Tantura used testimony to uncover a massacre. In Catherine Called Birdy, Lena Dunham considered womanhood through the prism of the past. In The Conspiracy, the documentarian Maxim Pozdorovkin used animation to plumb the origins of antisemitic libels.

Here are our picks for the best Jewish and Jew-ish movies of 2022.

Six of our favorites are below.

Read the full list of eight here.

Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song

Available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime.

As layered as the song at its center, Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s documentary is a virtuosic tour of Leonard Cohen’s life and career. Examining Cohen’s notebooks and unearthing previously unheard interviews, the film returns “Hallelujah” to a place of Jewish and artistic specificity while never forgetting that, like so many texts of Jewish origin, it has grown well beyond its roots. Read the review ➤

The Conspiracy

Not currently streaming.

There was never going to be a bad time for this animated documentary about the origins and aftershocks of modern antisemitic conspiracy theories. But when this film debuted this fall at DOC NYC, a certain rapper-entrepreneur had brought the topic to the forefront. By following the stories of three historical families implicated in false plots of Jewish control, Pozdorovkin’s film is compulsively watchable while also feeling comprehensive. Read the review ➤

Nope

Streaming on Peacock.

Like Us before it, Jordan Peele’s Spielbergian creature feature kicks off with a biblical portent: a quote from the prophet Nahum, foreshadowing a storm of filth. Peele’s sci-fi horror blockbuster took us to shul, packing in many references to 613 (the number of mitzvot in the Torah) and even opting to hide its extraterrestrial antagonist behind a cloud — God’s preferred hiding spot on Mount Sinai. Read the review ➤

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Not currently streaming.

This portrait of photographer and activist Nan Goldin focuses on illness and addiction, driving forces in Goldin’s life and art. Director Laura Poitras chronicles Goldin’s ongoing campaign for art institutions to reject donations from the Sacklers, the pharmaceutical family largely responsible for the opioid crisis. Read the story ➤

Tár

In theaters and on demand.

Todd Field’s meditation on cancel culture launched a singular character in Cate Blanchett’s Lydia Tár, a conductor with a fathomless CV. Among Tár’s pretensions are fluency in the Jewish concepts of teshuva and kavannah, terms she supposedly picked up from her alleged mentor, Leonard Bernstein. At one point, Tár mentions an Israeli violinist who demanded to know if she’s Jewish. She’s not, but he could be forgiven for asking. Read the story ➤

The Fabelmans

In theaters and on demand.

In Steven Spielberg’s “semi-autobiographical” Künstlerroman, Jewish imagery and language abound until, in a moment of magical realism, Judd Hirsh arrives unannounced as a great-uncle who somehow embodies the whole fish counter at Zabar’s. The spirit of the film falls short of a Jewish gestalt, but the fact remains that it’s about as close to a Jewish family blockbuster as we’re likely to get — in 2022, or ever. Read the review ➤

Read the full list

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