Screening 18 international movies from Nov. 3–13, the 10th annual Boulder Jewish Film Festival opens Thursday with the Boulder premiere of Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song. You know the song. You probably know John Cale’s version, maybe even Jeff Buckley’s. You’ve heard it in movies like Watchman and TV shows like Scrubs. We’re not talking just iconic, but ubiquitous. But you might not know the number of revisions Cohen went through while writing and performing the song and the reasons—personal, spiritual, and commercial—that went into the song’s composition. Directors Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine assemble an impressive collection of interviews, a slew of archival material and more renditions of “Hallelujah” than you ever knew you needed.

And as long as we’re talking docs, make sure to carve out time for Speer Goes to Hollywood (Nov. 4), Israeli director Vanessa Lapa’s excoriation of Albert Speer. Speer was Adolph Hitler’s ally and chief architect, but unlike Hermann Göring and Alfred Jodi, he was not sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials. His excuse: He did not know about the crimes being committed—though he had no qualms claiming that upwards of 12 million toiled under him as slave labor.

In 1969, Speer wrote a bestselling memoir, Inside the Third Reich. Paramount tried to adapt the book into a feature film, and Lapa uses the meetings between Speer and Hollywood screenwriter Andrew Birkin as the framing device to explore Speer’s life, his complicity and Hollywood’s fascination with trying to find men among monsters. It’s a powerful and troubling documentary that won’t leave you any time soon.

The above article first appeared in the pages of Boulder Weekly Vol. 30, No. 12, “Reel to reel.”