Movies Like 40 Nickels

God Speaks Yiddish

Movie

Forty years after leaving his ultra-Orthodox roots, journalist Tuvia Tenenbom returns to Jerusalem's Mea Shearim. With rare access, he uncovers a world that remains a mystery to outsiders.

Motel the Operator

1940

Motel, a poor laborer, loving husband and new father, leads cloakmakers in a strike for better working conditions. When he is severely injured by strikebreakers, his wife, Esther, and infant son are left destitute. Desperate to save her starving child, Esther gives him up for adoption to a wealthy couple, and then commits suicide. The richly-rendered beautiful Yiddish songs by Sholem Secunda featuring Cantor Leibele Waldman and Joel Feig's famous choir are a good example of the bittersweet melodrama in the finest tradition of the Yiddish theater.

Too Early to Be Quiet, Too Late to Sing

1995

Only a handful of Yiddish poets remain alive. Chava Alberstein sets out to interview those last writers of Yiddish poetry, to hear their poems and stories. Along the way, she sings a collection of Yiddish folk songs.

A Yiddish World Remembered

2004

Elliott Gould narrates this affectionate look at life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. "It's unreal that all this could have just disappeared," says Polish native Mariem Adler Stok, one of the seniors whose memories of this "Yiddish world" give this documentary its life. The hour traces Jewish history in Europe and explores Jews' focus on education, their religious customs, clothing, food, music and theater.

A bissele Glik

2009

Nifradnu Kach

1991

While saying goodbye to his son and grandchildren who are leaving Israel, Yackov remembers when, as a child, he also said goodbye to his family in Poland in 1937, not realizing that he would never see them again.

Rudy

1993

Rudy grew up in a steel mill town where most people ended up working, but wanted to play football at Notre Dame instead. There were only a couple of problems. His grades were a little low, his athletic skills were poor, and he was only half the size of the other players. But he had the drive and the spirit of 5 people and has set his sights upon joining the team.

I Remember Mama

1948

Norwegian immigrant Marta Hanson keeps a firm but loving hand on her household of four children, a devoted husband and a highly-educated lodger who reads great literature to the family every evening. Through financial crises, illnesses and the small triumphs of everyday life, Marta maintains her optimism and sense of humor, traits she passes on to her aspiring-author daughter, Katrin.

The Book of Daniel

2013

Taken into slavery after the fall of Jerusalem in 605 B.C., Daniel is forced to serve the most powerful king in the world, King Nebuchadnezzar. Faced with imminent death, Daniel proves himself a trusted Advisor and is placed among the king's wise men. Threatened by death at every turn Daniel never ceases to serve the king until he is forced to choose between serving the king or honoring God. With his life at stake, Daniel has nothing but his faith to stand between him and the lions' den.

4th Dementia

2024

In this multiverse comedy about Alzheimer's, Nellie travels through alternate dimensions in search of her husband.

The Damned Don't Cry

1950

Fed up with her small-town marriage, a woman goes after the big time and gets mixed up with the mob.

Oranges and Sunshine

2010

The story of Margaret Humphreys, a social worker from Nottingham, who uncovers one of the most significant social scandals in recent times – the forced migration of children from the United Kingdom to Australia and other Commonwealth countries. Almost singlehandedly, Margaret reunited thousands of families, brought authorities to account and worldwide attention to an extraordinary miscarriage of justice.

The One That Got Away

1957

Based on the true story of Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, the only German prisoner of war captured in Britain to escape back to Germany during the Second World War.

Avalon

1990

A Polish-Jewish family comes to the U.S. at the beginning of the twentieth century. There, the family and their children try to make themselves a better future in the so-called promised land.

Radium Girls

2020

Young women toiling in a factory are exposed to hazardous material which takes a disastrous toll on their health.

SHTTL

2023

In one continuous shot, SHTTL shows the lives, loves, and inner conflicts within a Yiddish speaking shtetl on the border between Ukraine and Poland - one day before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

The Current War

2018

Electricity titans Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse compete to create a sustainable system and market it to the American people.

The Song of Names

2019

A man searches for his childhood best friend, a Polish violin prodigy orphaned in the Holocaust, who vanished decades before on the night of his first public performance.