The story is set during 1917 and 1918, leading into American involvement in World War I, in the central California coastal towns of Monterey and Salinas. Cal (James Dean) and Aron (Richard Davalos) are the sons of a modestly successful farmer and wartime draft board chairman, Adam Trask (Raymond Massey). Cal is moody and embittered by his belief that his father favors Aron. Although both Cal and Aron had long been led to believe that their mother had died "and gone to heaven," the opening scene reveals Cal has apparently learned that his mother is still alive, owning and running a successful brothel in nearby Monterey.
1971: Arnold (Harvey Fierstein), a New York City female impersonator, meets Ed (Brian Kerwin), a bisexual schoolteacher, and they fall in love. Ed, however, is uncomfortable with his sexuality and he leaves Arnold for a girlfriend, Laurel.
Shlomo, an Ethiopian boy, is placed by his Christian mother with an Ethiopian Jewish woman whose child has died. This woman, who will become his adoptive mother, is about to be airlifted from a Sudanese refugee camp to Israel during Operation Moses in 1984. His birth mother, who hopes for a better life for him, tells him “Go, live, and become,” as he leaves her to board the plane. The film tells of his growing up in Israel and how he deals with the secrets he carries: not being Jewish and having left his birth mother.
Norman Finkelstein est né à Brooklyn en 1953, de parents survivants des camps de concentration nazis. En 1988, il obtient son doctorat du Department of Politics at Princeton University, sur la théorie du sionisme. Disciple de Noam Chomsky et brillant universitaire, Norman Finkelstein est l’auteur de plusieurs ouvrages traduits dans le monde entier dont L’industrie de l’Holocauste (Réflexion sur l’exploitation de la souffrance des Juifs) (La Fabrique Editions - 2000) et Mythes et réalité du conflit israélo-palestinien (Aden Editions - 2006). Mais, la liberté de ton de Finkelstein dérange, elle lui a valu en 2007 d’être licencié de l’Université DePaul (Chicago) et d’être taxé de « Juif antisémite » par des membres de lobbies pro-israéliens américains.
Checkpoint is shot in cinéma vérité style with no narration and very little context. Shamir himself is absent from the film except for one scene in which a border guard asks him to try to make him "look good," and Shamir asks how he should do that.
An 8-year-old boy named Bruno (Asa Butterfield) lives with his family in Berlin, in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. He learns that his father Ralf (David Thewlis) has been promoted, due to which their family, including Bruno's mother Elsa (Vera Farmiga) and 12-year-old sister Gretel (Amber Beattie), relocate to the countryside. Bruno hates his new home as there is no one to play with and very little to explore. After commenting that he has spotted people working on what he thinks is a farm in the distance, he is also forbidden from playing in the back garden.
In October 1956, Ronnie, a Dutch woman married to a Canadian clergyman, is on a package tour of Israel. While visiting a kibbutz, she sees the local schoolteacher, Rachel Rosenthal, and they realise they knew each other during World War II. As Rachel recalls the past near a riverbank, the film then flashes back to 1944, and begins the story of Rachel Stein, a Dutch-Jewish singer who had lived in Berlin before the war and is now hiding from the Nazi regime in the occupied Netherlands.
The film explores a troubled marriage that is complicated by the traditions and religious beliefs of the couple who are immigrants to Israel from Morocco. It revolves around the process of Jewish religious divorce which is known as a 'Gett', a process which must be granted by the husband and is sought through the religious court, as opposed to the secular government court. The movie gradually reveals subtle, and sometimes vengeful, nature of marital discontent. The story is told through multiple brief courtroom scenes, over the period of the trial, involving the personalities of all involved, sometimes relegating the litigants to minor roles.