There's no rest for weary movie lovers this week. But it's a good kind of tired.

Some of us have barely had a chance to catch up on sleep lost during last week's Gasparilla Film Festival — and now, lo and behold, here comes another one. The 12th annual Tampa Bay Jewish Film Festival rolls into town this week from March 6 to 19, with 14 brand new films in tow from England, France, Germany, Israel and the United States.

This year's TBJFF transports viewers across continents and cultures to offer a truly eclectic sampling of the Jewish experience, both sweet and sour, with particular emphasis on the role that family plays in the lives on screen. As always, the festival's lineup consists largely of imports hot off the international circuit, and most of these movies are not likely to show up any time soon in your local multiplex. Many of them won't even see the light on DVD, at least in this country, so TBJFF's one-time-only screenings may be your only chance to see them.

This year's festival is a moveable feast, kicking off at Tampa Theatre, then moving across the water to St. Pete's Muvico Baywalk for a few days and then relocating to the University of South Florida for a grand finale. The festival officially begins on Thurs., March 6, but, for the record, TBJFF already slipped quietly into the Bay area on March 4 with a preview of Knowledge is the Beginning, a documentary about conductor Daniel Barenboim's orchestra of young Israelis and Arabs playing music as "the language of peace."

The bells and whistles are reserved for the festival's big opening night, March 6, when TBJFF celebrates funny girls with a night devoted to Jewish humor of the female persuasion. Making Trouble, a look at Jewish comediennes from Fanny Brice to Gilda Radner, will play at 7 p.m,, with a dessert reception following the screening. The evening's special guest is Last Comic Standing and Comedy Central regular Cory Kahaney, who also appears in the film.

As always, the festival closes down on Friday for the Jewish Sabbath, but TBJFF returns to Tampa Theatre on Sat., March 8, with one of its best offerings, Schwartz Dynasty (7 p.m.). Alternately absurd and touching, the movie offers up a rich tapestry of small-town Israeli life, skewering bureaucrats and buffoons of all stripes as it focuses on several generations of the titular family. The film's reference points are more literary than cinematic, with the Schwartzes recalling the grandly dysfunctional clans of Philip Roth or Salinger's Glass family, and the whole movie brims with life.

Less successful but still well worth a look is Someone to Run With (9 p.m.), which apes the editing rhythms and, to some extent, the gimmick of Run Lola Run to show us a young man dashing after a golden retriever as both attempt to locate the dog's owner before time runs out. The dog's-eye view of Jerusalem is fascinating, as are some of the characters we encounter along the way, but Someone to Run With ultimately settles for overly familiar melodrama, and this nearly two-hour feature would have probably worked better as a brisk 20-minute short.

One of my favorite films from this year's festival is Praying with Lior (Sun., March 9, 1 p.m.), a documentary about a 13-year-old boy with Down syndrome who loses himself in prayer with the selfless passion of a true mystic. The film could have easily amounted to a sentimental slog, but Praying with Lior offers so many colorful, complex personalities and ineffable emotions, it transcends our expectations.

After another break, the festival moves over to St. Pete's Baywalk on Thurs., March 13, with a pair of films that root around in the ashes of the Holocaust. The evening begins with the acclaimed French feature Nina's Home (7 p.m.), the true story of a woman who attempted to treat the traumatized child survivors of Nazi death camps. Following at 9 p.m. is Pesya's Necklace, a disquieting memory piece about an 80-year-old woman who travels with her granddaughter back to her childhood home in Poland.

The festival goes dark again on Friday, but returns to Baywalk on Sat., March 15 with Beaufort (8 p.m.), an Academy Award-nominated epic about the final days of the Israeli conflict in Lebanon. I wasn't able to preview Beaufort, but the film has been receiving rave reviews (its director, Joseph Cedar, also won the coveted Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival), making this one of the festival's must-sees. Also playing on March 15 is A Touch Away (10 p.m.), a sampling of episodes from the hit Israeli television series about the dovetailing lives of two very different families in modern-day Tel Aviv.

The schedule for Sun., March 16 features two coming-of-age comedies, beginning with Sixty Six (1 p.m.), in which a London boy's dreams of the perfect bar mitzvah are rained upon by World Cup fever. Helena Bonham Carter and Stephen Rea star. Following at 3 p.m. is The First Time I Turned Twenty, a whimsical French import with a vaguely murky undercurrent. Another fish-out-of-water tale, the film focuses a pudgy, 16-year-old outsider who wages an uphill battle against male chauvinism, anti-Semitism and her shallow, boy-crazy sisters.

After yet another hiatus (and yes, all the stops-and-starts do get tiresome), TBJFF '08 concludes with a Wed., March 19 screening of the award-winning Israeli film Aviva My Love (7 p.m., USF Health Services Auditorium). The winner of six Israeli Academy Awards, Aviva My Love is set in the picturesque seaside town of Tiberius, where working mom and aspiring writer Aviva tries to put bread on the table while dealing with her eccentric family and transmuting her troubles into the curious little stories that incorporate themselves into the film's narrative. It's a strangely charming little movie and a fine way to bring this year's festival to a close. Miriam Talmon-Bohm, professor of Israeli film at Wesleyan, will be on hand for a post-screening Q&A.

The 12th Annual Tampa Bay Jewish Film Festival runs from March 4 to 19 at Tampa Theatre, Muvico Baywalk 20, 151 Second Ave. N., St Petersburg and USF's Health Science Auditorium, Tampa. For more information, call 813-264-9000, or go to jewishtampa.com or gmkjc.org.

This article appears in Mar 5-11, 2008.