A film festival is the cinematic equivalent of a buffet. You survey the selections, see what looks appealing and decide what you're in the mood for and take a healthy helping.

In its second week, the Pittsburgh Jewish Israeli Film Festival offers real-life stories of inspiration, escapist fare, documentaries and features with unknowns and stars such as Susan Sarandon, Gabriel Byrne, Christopher Plummer and Max von Sydow, all in "Emotional Arithmetic," playing on March 25.

A sampling of the dozen-plus festival selections playing through month's end:

3 1/2 stars = Very good
Ratings explained

You may ask, with a tinge of guilt, why you'd want to see yet another documentary about the Holocaust. "As Seen Through These Eyes" gives compelling reason to do so, both for its innovative approach to the portion of subject matter that is familiar, and because it makes evident that it will take more than one pass to exhume a violation so heinous that the words and imagery so far amassed have not yet sufficiently represented it.

Writer-director Hilary Helstein, who will appear with the film, presents the thesis that Hitler, twice rejected by Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts, "transformed his obsession with art towards the creation of destruction."

The film opens with a barbed wire-framed view of railroad tracks leading into a prison camp and contains harrowing wartime footage.

But the force within the story is the artwork created by the imprisoned who defied threat of death. Art became a tool of survival, escape, empowerment, release and witness, and it is incomprehensibly resplendent despite its heartbreaking subject matter.

Interviews with survivors are poignant studies of character and reflection. Many continued throughout their lives to make Holocaust images "to get rid of memories," while others felt that succeeding generations might learn from them. Several of those interviewed, such as noted Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and Gypsy artist Karl Stojka, have died since filming began a decade ago, and have themselves become part of the legacy.

The atypical cadence of poet Maya Angelou's narration is lined by passion, testimony and the experience of persecution, and so is fitting for this story of men, women and children who gave the world artworks brimming with the same qualities.

Not rated but contains disturbing Holocaust-related imagery.

-- Mary Thomas,
Post-Gazette art critic

3 stars = Good
Ratings explained

A mechanic breaks the news to Beetle owner Yishai Orian: "Start saying goodbye to the car." But the Jerusalem man cannot bear to part with the banged-up yellow Bug with the orangey-red hood that looks like a big tongue.

"Somebody loved this car before me, otherwise it wouldn't have lasted 40 years. Surely I'm not the only one. If Eliraz could see that it's not just a piece of tin but a legacy and that many other people loved it with all their hearts, then she will understand," he reasons.

But Eliraz is his pregnant wife who doesn't understand, even as Yishai researches the history of the Beetle and its ties to Hitler and weighs selling, scrapping or overhauling his car.

Anyone who ever formed an emotional attachment to a car will understand Yishai's bond with the Beetle and he couldn't have asked for more dramatic or diverse tales of ownership. "The Beetle" is about more than a car; it's about impending fatherhood, determination bordering on insanity and fellowship that flowers in the most unlikely places.

"The Beetle" omits the one conversation between husband and wife that could put a damper on the doc, but it's so charming and life-affirming that you can forgive the producer-director. He reminds us that everyone may want a smooth road, but it's the detours and breakdowns and surprises that you savor most.

In Hebrew and some Arabic with English subtitles. Not rated but PG in nature.

-- Barbara Vancheri,
Post-Gazette movie editor

3 stars = Good
Ratings explained

The person who best understands Eliane (Emmanuelle Devos) may be her Jewish father. And he's dead.

But the Frenchwoman occasionally talks to him at the cemetery. "I can't be myself. I can't be a mensch. I can't do what I want." She's not sure what she wants, though.

Eliane is a wife, a mother, a daughter to a demanding woman, a sister, an elementary school teacher, a friend and a woman who is happiest when she's writing, drawing and doodling in her notebooks. "Can't I be alone for two seconds?" she asks, with exasperation, when her husband rattles the knob to the bathroom where she's hiding out.

When Eliane decides to pursue her passion and not cater to those around her, their world slips off its axis. It's delightful to watch the liberation of Eliane and to see the reaction of those around her.

"Two Lives Plus One" is the warm, sometimes comic story of one woman who is tired of keeping all the balls in the air and decides to quit being a juggler and, at last, live a little.

PG-13 in nature. In French with English subtitles.

--Barbara Vancheri

2 1/2 stars = Average
Ratings explained

Every film festival needs a few challenging movies, the ones without easy subject matter, recognizable stars or familiar backdrops. The ones that transport you to a wildly different time and place -- such as the Kazakh steppes in the late 1940s.

This is one of those movies, with its dialogue in Russian, Kazakh and Hebrew (and English subtitles, sometimes white against white) and translations that are a little shaky at times.

An 8-year-old Jewish boy, traveling by train with his dying Moscow grandfather, is mistaken for dead when bodies of refugees are dumped from a train in Kazakhstan. A scarred, one-eyed rail worker named Kasym, ordered to bury the bodies, saves him from being discovered and killed, more than once.

Kasym's rural village, including a beautiful widow victimized many times over by the Stalin regime, closes ranks around the boy. But if holding him dear saved his life at the start, sending him afar may save it in the end.

"Gift to Stalin," perhaps incorrectly, presumes moviegoers have some rudimentary knowledge of the region, but it succeeds in filtering history through memorable faces, places, and tragic events, on both small and grand scales.

Contains some adult content. In Russian, Kazakh and Hebrew with English subtitles.

--Barbara Vancheri