Zionism and the Holocaust are, obviously, the two central facts of 20^th-century Jewish history. Each is, in its way, intimately linked with the history of cinema. Theodor Herzl’s awakening as a Jew is usually dated to his covering the Dreyfus Trial in 1894-’95, the year in which the Lumière brothers offered the first public screening of motion pictures. Both the Nazis and their opponents used film as a key element in their propaganda; film footage of the death camps has always been one of the most powerful forms of testimony to the Shoah’s horrors.

The lessons imparted by “Foreign Letters,” the debut feature of Israeli-American director Ela Thier, are ones that will be familiar to anyone who has gone through the tweener-girl film canon of titles like “Mean Girls,” and similar television tales. It’s not exactly controversial to argue in favor of loyalty to friends, self-defense against class bullies of any gender and a vaguely liberal disdain for the rudely arrogant rich.