First Run Features offer two new titles that are, as usual,  first-rate features.

Some info to intrigue you:

Concrete Love (German with English subtitles)
Pritzker Prize laureate Gottfried Böhm is widely regarded as Germany’s preeminent architect. The son of a master builder of churches, he’s also the patriarch of a modern architecture dynasty to which his three sons, Stephan, Peter and Paul, belong. But with the death of Gottfried’s wife Elisabeth, also an architect and a key source of inspiration for all the Böhm builders, the family loses its emotional lodestone.

One German shares his take on Maurizius Staerkle Drux’s documentary: “Concrete Love tells a multi-layered tale of love, the passion for architecture and four generations of German history. With sensitive observations, intimate interviews and stirring filmic explorations of an extraordinary architectural legacy, the film creates a lasting impression of the buildings and the people.”

The Ruins of Lifta ( Arabic & Hebrew with English subtitles)
The village Lifta, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, is the only Arab village abandoned in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that has not been completely destroyed or repopulated by Jews. Its ruins are now threatened by an Israeli development plan that would convert it into an upscale Jewish neighborhood.

Filmmaker Menachem Daum–an Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn–sets out to discover the story behind the headlines. He meets Yacoub, a Palestinian who was expelled from Lifta and now leads the struggle to save the haunting ruins of his village from Israeli plans to build luxury villas on the site. Learning that Lifta was once a place where Jews and Arabs got along, Menachem joins Yacoub’s campaign in the hopes that Lifta can serve as a place of reflection and reconciliation. This leads to a climactic encounter between a Holocaust survivor and a Nakba refugee amidst the ruins of Lifta.