One of the highlights of this year’s Jewish International Film Festival is the short and sweet documentary DO YOU BELIEVE IN LOVE?

In the digital age the time honoured vocation of matchmaker has had a battering but like so many traditions, it has endured in modern Israel, thanks to people like Tova Shamison.

Matchmakers have been immortalised in motion picture musicals like Hello Dolly! and Fiddler on the Roof, but melody has been replaced with malady in this surprising and subtly inspiring film.

Tova succumbed to muscular dystrophy shortly after the birth of her first child and has been wheelchair bound for much of her 43 year old marriage. Her husband’s health has been fragile as well but their relationship has endured and flourished despite dire disease.

One of the most poignant set pieces of the picture is the couple making a living will, a hard headed decision made with plenty of heart.

Turning adversity into opportunity, Tova specialises in matching people with disabilities, not with dewy eyed romanticism but with tough love cynicism, a pragmatism that eschews schmaltz.

The film chronicles two current cases: that of a blind woman and one of a wheel chair bound woman, both of whom have retained Tova to make them a match, find them a find, catch them a catch. Their trials and tribulations on the trail to matrimony are interspersed with Tova’s looming heir styling, as she gets ready to turn over the business to her daughter, a generational jump of great significance.

The Jewish International Film Festival offers features, shorts, documentary and television series, including 43 major international award winners, runs from Wednesday October 29 to Saturday November 16 at Event Cinemas, Bondi Junction.