Museum of Tolerance Opens First Annual International Film Festival

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 15, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- This past Saturday, November 13, the Museum of Tolerance, one of the most prominent centers for education, understanding, and culture in the United States, launched its first Museum of Tolerance International Film Festival (MOTIFF) with a screening of "The Way Back," directed by six-time Academy Award® nominee Peter Weir. The Festival, featuring films that shine a light on human rights issues both past and present, will run through Thursday, November 18, 2010.  The Museum is opening its three theatres, including the 300-seat state-of-the-art Peltz Theatre, to the over 20 films from 8 countries around the world. "There is no better place for a film festival dedicated to human dignity and mutual respect than the Museum of Tolerance, where every day, people from diverse backgrounds and religions come to learn the consequences of man's inhumanity to man and the desperate need for a more tolerant society," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, Founding Director of MOTIFF and the Founder and Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and himself the recipient of two Oscars™ for Best Documentary. "Cinema leaves a lasting impression on its audiences and is a valuable way to instill the museum's vision in a new audience," he added.

Some of the festival highlights include:

• "Made in Dagenham," an upcoming real-life story of female machinists who took on the Ford Motor Co. in England to earn equal pay for women. It stars Sally Hawkins, Bob Hoskins, Miranda Richardson, Geraldine James and Rosamund Pike;
• "100 Voices: A Journey Home," follows 100 great cantors from around the world as they return to Poland, the birthplace of Jewish cantorial music.
• "Winston Churchill: Walking With Destiny," the dramatic story of 1940-1941, when Winston Churchill and England stood alone against Nazi Germany;
• "Iron Cross," which stars the late Roy Scheider--in his last movie role-- as a retired New York cop and Holocaust survivor, who grapples with the need to exact vengeance when he sees the man who may have murdered his family during the War.  
• "When We Leave," Germany's official entry for the Best Foreign Film Oscar™, is the story of a Turkish woman's struggle between her family in Turkey and a better life in Berlin.

Intertwined with these films are five classics of American cinema that brought issues of bigotry and injustice to the forefront: To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan,1962); Boys Don't Cry (Kimberly Peirce, 1999); and three by celebrated director Stanley Kramer: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (1967); Judgment at Nuremberg (1961); and The Defiant Ones (1958). Wednesday night's screening of Mockingbird will feature a special appearance by Academy Award™-winning actor Robert Duvall, who won acclaim for his role as Boo Radley.

The lineup also includes "Change in the Wind," "Down For Life," "Ingelore," "From Philadelphia to The Front," "Goodbye Mothers," "Out of Infamy: Michi Nishiura Weglyn," "Reconciliation: Mandela's Miracle," "Strangers No More," "The Bang Bang Club," "The Calling," "When We Leave," and "With Honors Denied."

The Museum has named Craig Prater as Executive Director of the festival. Prater, who has been active in the film industry for over 15 years, has served as Executive Director of the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Bangkok International Film Festival. His company currently directs The Coachella Valley Latino International Film Festival, Southeast Premieres Film Events of Tampa, Fl.

To download a full MOTIFF schedule or for more information, go to http://www.museumoftolerance.com/MOTIFF or call the Museum's Public Relations department, 310-553-9036.

SOURCE Museum of Tolerance