The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival will show 36 films over seven days, starting with “A Bridge to Peace” on Monday, Jan. 23, and ending with “Fateless” on Sunday, Jan. 29. 

Put another way, the festival runs from a question-and-answer session with stage and screen star Theodore Bikel and music director Tamara Brooks of “A Bridge to Peace” to a session with Alex Kor, the son of Eva Kor, the Holocaust survivor featured in “Forgiving Dr. Mengele.”

Those question-and-answer sessions, scheduled every day of the film festival except Friday, Jan. 27, are a big part of what separates the festival from just another night at the movies — albeit one with an eclectic selection of Jewish-themed films that you aren’t likely to see on most weekends at the multiplex.

Some of the guests are actors or filmmakers involved with the movie just shown. Others are academics or professionals with experience relevant to the film.

“The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival seeks to enrich the moviegoer experience by presenting special guest speakers before and after screenings,” reads the festival’s Web site, www.atlantajewishfilm.org. “A variety of filmmakers, actors, academics, film critics and other experts engage the audience in discussion.” 

The sixth annual Atlanta Jewish Film Festival’s program guide, distributed with the Dec. 30 issue of the Atlanta Jewish Times and available at sites throughout Jewish Atlanta, included a schedule and description of the movies. Here’s a preview of the festival’s post-screening discussions (all are at Lefont Sandy Springs unless otherwise specified):

• Monday — In a night that starts with a sold-out reception at the Fox Sports Grill and ends with a dessert reception at the same restaurant next to the Regal Cinemas theater at Atlantic Station, the highlight could be the personal appearance of Bikel to discuss the world premiere of “A Bridge to Peace,” a documentary about a Brooks-led music tour of Poland last June.

• Tuesday — Documentarian David Lewis will speak at the showing of the Picasso-esque animated short “God on Our Side” and the documentary “On the Objection Front,” about conscientious objectors in the Israeli military during the intifada. None of the stars from the end-of-life comedy “Checking Out” are coming, but screenwriter Richard Marcus and Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz will be there. Meanwhile, during the Rainbow Coalition’s night at the festival, the young woman at the heart of “Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School,” Brown University student Shulamit Izen, will be out in front of the audience, as will “Keep Not Silent” producer Lynn Roth after that documentary about Orthodox lesbians.

• Wednesday — Who better to talk about the documentary “A Cantor’s Tale” than a cantor? The film festival welcomes Henry Rosenblum, the dean of the Cantorial School and College of Jewish Music at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. The festival also is calling on French Consul General Philippe Ardanaz and Emory film professor Matthew Bernstein to handle before-and-after duties for “Local Call,” a French Jewish cellphone comedy. There won’t be many laughs when therapist Frank Pittman discusses “To Take a Wife,” about an Israeli woman trapped in a loveless marriage.

• Thursday — “Shooting Under Fire” takes a look at the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the perspective of the difficulties it poses for objective reporting; documentarian Lewis will help set the scene. After “The Ritchie Boys,” a documentary about a group of German Jewish immigrants who returned to Europe as U.S. soldiers in World War II, actual Ritchie Boy Richard Schifter will speak. At Atlantic Station, arguably the biggest acting star of the festival will take part in Young Professionals Night when star Lesley Ann Warren joins director Salvador Litvak to talk about the manic Passover comedy “When Do We Eat?”

• Saturday — The one truly epic feature of the festival is “Live and Become,” about an Ethiopian child who pretends to be Jewish to escape to Israel and grows up to live a lie. Star Sirak M. Sabhat, the oldest of three actors who portray the main character, and Dr. Stephen Kutner, who has treated Ethiopian Jews through Jewish Healthcare International, are scheduled to answer questions; former Atlanta Jewish Times editor Bob Menaker will handle the introductions. At Atlantic Station, a showing of the screen adaptation of “The Tenants,” starring Snoop Dogg and Dylan McDermott, will lead to a discussion featuring director Danny Green and actor Seymour Cassel.

• Sunday — The final day, all at Lefont, will feature discussions after at least two films. Associate producer Kim Fishman is scheduled to take questions after “39 Pounds of Love,” a documentary about the U.S. road trip of a 34-year-old Israel animator who weighs only 39 pounds because of muscular dystrophy. And Alex Kor will close the question-and-answer sessions, if not the festival itself, by talking about his mother and “Forgiving Dr. Mengele.” The introductions that day also should be worth the price of admission. Shula Bahat, the associate executive director of the American Jewish Committee, will help kick off the closing day by presenting “The Syrian Bride.” And columnist/stand-up comedian Ray Hanania — a Christian Palestinian-American married to a Jew — will do his shtick before two somewhat lighthearted looks at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Broadway-inspired short “West Bank Story” and the peace-through-belly-dancing documentary “Oriental.”