Bern Cohen

Actor

Biography

Bern Cohen (New York City, 1949) is an American actor and educator. He spent many years in the New York City education system before returning to acting in 2005. Description above from the Wikipedia article Bern Cohen, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Filmography

7.4

Russian Doll

Yeshiva Teacher

Nadia keeps dying and reliving her 36th birthday party. She's trapped in a surreal time loop -- and staring down the barrel of her own mortality.

6.5

27 Dresses

Rabbi

Altruistic Jane finds herself facing her worst nightmare as her younger sister announces her engagement to the man Jane secretly adores.

7.5

The Six Triple Eight

Rabbi

During World War II, the US Army's only all-Black, all-women battalion takes on an impossible mission: sorting through a three-year backlog of 17 million pieces of mail that hadn't been delivered to American soldiers and finish within six months.

7.0

This Must Be the Place

Rabbi

A bored, retired rock star living in Ireland sets out to find his dead father's tormentor, an ex-Nazi war criminal who is a refugee in the U.S.

N/A

The Floaters

The Mashgiach

Struggling musician Nomi accepts a last-resort job from her overachiever best friend Mara: mentoring misfit campers, the “Floaters,” at their childhood Jewish summer camp. As the camp struggles to survive amidst competition with a longtime rival, Nomi, the Floaters, and Mara must overcome their differences to bring the community together and save the camp.

5.6

To Dust

Reb Goshen

Shmuel, a Hasidic cantor in Upstate New York and distraught at the untimely death of his wife, struggles to find religious solace, while secretly obsessing over how her body will decay. As a clandestine partnership develops with Albert, a local community college biology professor, the two embark on a darkly comic and increasingly literal undertaking into the underworld.

4.5

Game 6

Hasidic Rabbi (uncredited)

Combining real and fictional events, this movie centers around the historic 1986 World Series, and a day in the life of a playwright who skips opening night to watch the momentous game.

5.3

After Class

Dr. Peterson

An NYC Professor spends the week reconnecting with his family while defending his reputation over controversial behavior at his college. Meanwhile, his family is determined to make an around-the-clock effort to support their matriarch when she’s admitted to New York’s Presbyterian Hospital and is expected to die within a few days.

5.0

My Brother

Harvey Mitnick

"My Brother" is an inner city story of two impoverished boys, Isaiah and James. James is developmentally disabled. Their mother, L'Tisha, finds herself in a tragic situation. Dying of tuberculosis, she desperately tries to get her two boys, eight and eleven at the time, adopted together. Finding that only Isaiah can be adopted. L'Tisha makes the only choice she feels she can make; creating an unbreakable bond of love between the boys, and hoping that bond will get them through life. Her prayers are answered as the boys overcome impossible odds on their way to adulthood, staying as close as ever as young men dealing with life's obstacles.

5.7

Holy Rollers

Rebbe Horowitz

Inspired by actual events in the late nineties when Hasidic Jews were recruited as mules to smuggle ecstasy from Europe into the United States.

4.3

The Devil You Know

Humphrey Smith

Kathryn Vale is a reclusive ex-movie star with a dark secret and a daughter hoping to follow in her mother's movie-star footsteps. When Kathryn attempts to make a career comeback, she is threatened by an anonymous blackmailer. The resulting events force Kathryn to confront the truth about herself and those around her.

5.2

Tango Shalom

Rabbi Menahem

When a Tango dancer asks a Rabbi to enter a dance competition, there’s one big problem—due to his Orthodox beliefs, he’s not allowed to touch her! But the prize money would save his school from bankruptcy, so they develop a plan to enter the competition without sacrificing his faith, and the bonds of family and community are tested one dazzling dance step at a time in this lighthearted fable.

6.0

Doctor Bello

Doctor Bernstein

Cancer specialist Dr. Michael Durant forms an unlikely bond with seven year old Sam and becomes desperate, willing to risk anything to save the child’s life. A surreptitious Nigerian Nurse convinces him to seek the help of Dr. Bello, an uncertified Nigerian Doctor, known in the Brooklyn-African underground as a miracle worker.

10.0

Unraveled

Rabbi Rosenfeld

On the verge of his Bar Mitzvah, Simon’s recurring nightmares about dropping the Torah threaten to derail his big day. Simon is only three days away from his Bar Mitzvah and the nightmares are getting worse. This Saturday, he becomes a man in the eyes of Judaism. His Father, recently divorced, is on a religious journey of his own. Heartbroken by his ex-wife’s remarriage, Simon’s father has become an orthodox Jew. He spends his days wrapped in Tefillin, and cloaked in his Tallis. As Simon’s Father urges him towards blind faith rather than understanding, Simon finds himself haunted by his Torah portion and by his fear of dropping the Torah. As his Bar Mitzvah grows closer, Simon’s nightmares grow more vivid. As the day arrives, Simon is called forth in front of the entire congregation to deliver his Torah Portion, and to share his beliefs with the community. His father watches on, desperate to see his son take the same path as him.

7.0

Frank vs. God

Rabbi Grossman

Frank is a man who thinks he has lost everything, until his house is destroyed by a tornado. Then when he goes to the insurance company, he’s told they won't pay because the damage falls under the "Act of God" exclusion in his policy. With nothing left, and nothing left to lose, he decides to sue God himself for damages, naming representatives of the world's religions as defendants in the suit. What starts as a ridiculous stunt, becomes a beautiful, funny, soulful odyssey in which he rediscovers that love itself... requires a leap of faith.

6.9

Project Nim

Dr. William Lemmon

From the team behind Man on Wire comes the story of Nim, the chimpanzee who in the 1970s became the focus of a landmark experiment which aimed to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child. Following Nim's extraordinary journey through human society, and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way, the film is an unflinching and unsentimental biography of an animal we tried to make human. What we learn about his true nature - and indeed our own - is comic, revealing and profoundly unsettling.

5.5

Snakeeater

Alon

Against the backdrop of a decaying cityscape, Rick Miner, an off-the-books insurance investigator, is tasked with examining the suspicious death of an ex-con involving a million-dollar life insurance claim. While retracing the victim’s steps, Rick grows increasingly unsettled by the unfolding timeline of events and the uncertainty of his own sanity.

4.3

Algorithm: BLISS

Chester

Vic Beckett, a brilliant researcher, creates the ultimate App that taps into the pleasure center of the brain and transmits a feeling of nirvana to the user.

5.6

Shooting Clerks

Thomas Burke

The biopic of how Kevin Smith bankrolled his $27,000 first film with maxed-out credit cards and became the darling of the Sundance Film Festival when Clerks debuted there in 1994.

4.0

Goyband

Jeremiah the Gambler

Once front man of the 90s mega-hit boy band Eye Candy, Bobby Starr's solo career is definitely so low! Eight years later, headlining kids' birthday parties, bowling alleys, and bar mitzvahs, Starr is desperate to reclaim his chart-topping glam years.