By now you know about the Rochester Jewish Film Festival, right? This year marks its ninth edition, bringing to this city some of the planet's best feature and documentary films about the Jewish experience, from places both near and as far-flung as Australia and Kazakhstan. Highlights include Aviva Kempner's documentary "Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg," about unlikely entertainment pioneer Gertrude Berg, as well as the closing night film, Edward Zwick's "Defiance," featuring a post-film discussion with family members of partisan Tuva Bielski.

While we can't cover all of the films, below find some choice highlights. For more information about this year's festival along with instructions on how to submit your own film for next year's 10th anniversary, visit rjff.org or call 461-2000 ext. 235.

"Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust" (Dryden Theatre, Monday, July 13, 6:30 p.m.) As a thrilling new medium that began to skyrocket in popularity right around the time of Adolf Hitler's rise to power, it initially fell to the motion-picture industry to figure out how to acknowledge world events while conducting the business of show. Hollywood botched it, of course, choosing to soft-peddle the threat for fear of offending its lucrative German audience, and has spent the ensuing decades doing penance. Through a trove of clips from films like 1940's groundbreaking "The Great Dictator" and 1993's Oscar-winning "Schindler's List" as well as rare archival footage, Daniel Anker's fascinating documentary examines the various ways in which movies and television have attempted to address the Holocaust, an unignorable, yet possibly unfilmable, episode in human history. As "Sophie's Choice" producer Martin Starger poses it, "You could never portray it. But the dilemma is: Should you not do it?"

"Four Seasons Lodge" (JCC's Hart Theatre, Tuesday, July 14, 2 p.m.) It's just a gaggle of little old ladies playing cards, but the numbers etched into their forearms are a sobering reminder of the hell these women endured in order to be able to live out their golden years. They're gathered at a bungalow colony in the Catskills called the Four Seasons Lodge, which for the previous 30-plus years has served as a summer getaway for concentration-camp survivors and their families, whether bonded by blood or shared experience. This loving documentary by New York Times reporter Andrew Jacobs - featuring lenswork by the peerless Albert Maysles - chronicles what looks to be the Four Seasons Lodge's final season, as the vacationers grow older and the formerly tireless men in charge finally begin to feel their octogenarian ages. As we get to know the wise, funny individuals who are part of the Lodge, we learn that some of them are very ready to relate their war stories, while others are more reluctant to relive something that for them has never really gone away.

"The Wedding Song" (Little Theatre, Thursday, July 16, 9 p.m.) Writer-director Karin Albou's follow-up to her acclaimed debut feature "La Petite Jerusalem" finds her once again exploring interfaith relations, this time through the slowly differing paths of two best friends in Nazi-occupied Tunisia. Each covets the other's life - Muslim Nour dreams of an education while Jewish Myriam wishes she were marrying for love rather than money - but both are forced to cope with the bigotry attendant to their respective religions. Albou elicits gorgeously nuanced performances from her two leads, devoted to each other but also to their families and faiths, which sometimes divides them. And though Albou aces her own acting debut with a forceful performance as Myriam's mother, her eye for the cinematic details of ritual and tradition (at times unflinching, especially in that jawdropping sugaring scene) should cement her status as a filmmaker to watch.

"A Secret" (Dryden Theatre, Saturday, July 18, 9 p.m.) An all-star French cast, including Mathieu Amalric and Cecile de France, glitters in director Claude Miller's beautifully filmed psychological drama, based on a true story and gradually revealing the skeletons rattling in the closet of a family of Parisian Jews. François, born after the war to loving, athletic parents, creates an imaginary super-brother to compensate for his physical shortcomings, an invention that he learns isn't far from the truth. Julie Depardieu won a César for her performance as the family friend who finally gives up the ghost, but it's Ludivine Sagnier's increasingly distressed Hannah (you might recognize her from her very different role in Ozon's "Swimming Pool") who stays with you, uttering three little words during her gripping final scene that should make your blood run cold.

The Ninth Annual Rochester Jewish Film Festival

Sunday, July 12-Monday, July 20

Various locations

Check rjff.org for details