Montreal: The 8th Montreal Jewish Film Festival, May 8-15, opens with a gala screening of German director Caroline Link’s Nowhere in Africa, winner of this year’s Academy Award for best foreign-language picture.

The film tells the story of a German-Jewish family who flees the Nazi regime in 1938 for a remote farm in British-colonized Kenya. The picture won the best feature prize at the 2002 Jerusalem International Film Festival and five ’02 Golden Lolas, the German film awards, including best film and best director.

The program also includes Lina and Slava Chaplin’s A Trumpet in the Wadi, the Elizabeth Marton doc My Name Was Sabrina Spielrein, evoking the extraordinary correspondence and relationship between an unknown Russian-Jewish woman and psychoanalysis giants Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung; and American anthropologist Ruth Behar’s Adio Kerida, chronicling Behar’s search for Sephardic Jews in Cuba and Jewish-Cubans (‘Jubans’) who live in the U.S.

Screenings take place at Cinematheque Quebecoise and the NFB Cinema.

In other festival news, Vues d’Afrique (www.vuesdafrique.org) has annnounced the 19th edition of Journees du cinema africain et creole/African and Caribbean Film Festival will run April 25 to May 3.

The festival programs close to 100 titles, including feature films, docs, animation and videoclips from sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and North America.

Actor Sophie Faucher and novelist/screenwriter Dany Laferriere are this year’s honorary spokespersons. Screenings take place at the refurbished Cinema Beaubien and Cinema ONF. Selected fest highlights will also be presented simultaneously in Quebec City, Gatineau, QC and Ottawa.

The Just For Laughs short-film showcase, Eat My Shorts! (Tout Court!), and its edgier sidebar sister program, Eat My Twisted Shorts!, are looking for all manner of entries for this year’s edition, which runs July 10-20. Submissions should be sent to JFL’s Katherine Harris and preferably be under 10 minutes in duration and on NTSC or PAL VHS cassette or DVD.

Over the years, the short-film showcase has been an important launch pad for a number of promising careers, with entries like The Spirit of Christmas, the forerunner of South Park; Greg Lawrence’s Kevin Spencer (Saturday Night Live); Oscar nominees Redux Riding Hood and Rejected; the Pixar-produced short For the Birds; and Bruce Smith’s The Proud Family, now a toon series on Disney Channel.

The deadline for submissions is April 30 (www.hahaha.com/comedia).

Eat My Shorts! and Eat My Twisted Shorts! are part of Comedia, the JFL film festival.