The sight of a boxer wrapping his wrists in anticipation of a big bout is a staple of fight films, but welterweight contender Dimitriy Salita alternates between tape and tefilin. Jason Hutt’s documentary Orthodox Stance (4*; May 4, 3:30pm, Bloor Cinema), which makes its local premiere as part of the 16th annual Toronto Jewish Film Festival, follows the Brooklyn-raised son of Russian-Jewish immigrants as he goes from amateur to pro. It’s a difficult transition made even more so by Salita’s strict adherence to his faith. For starters, that means no fighting on the Sabbath, and even if the various promoters that come into Salita’s orbit seem surprisingly ready to accommodate this request, there are other logistical issues (like balancing a proper training regimen against a kosher diet) clouding the situation.

And yet, Orthodox Stance is not a portrait of a young man in crisis. Salita’s composure between the ropes extends to the world beyond him (and his ethnically diverse entourage is flush with contingency plans). What makes Orthodox Stance compelling beyond its believe-it-or-not hook is our growing realization that Salita is no novelty act. The victories he piles up are literal as well as moral, and even if Hutt’s film favours standard athlete-profile rhythms, there’s a reason that the slow, road-to-the-main-event build has endured almost as long as cinema itself.

Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project (3*; May 5, 6:15pm, Bloor Cinema) focuses on a different kind of pugilism: the startlingly incorrect insult comedy of its octogenarian subject, still directing epithet-laden invective to appreciative Vegas crowds. John Landis’ film assembles an Aristocrats-calibre roll call of comics (as well as the Oscar-winning likes of Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese and John Lasseter) to trumpet what they perceive as Rickles’ prickly genius. Actual insight is at a premium (Scorsese keeps breaking up at the mere memory of directing Rickles in Casino) but there are enough juicy bygone Hollywood anecdotes to maintain interest.

The obvious heavy hitter among the TJFF features would seem to be Joseph Cedar’s 2008 Foreign Language Oscar nominee Beaufort (2*; May 4, 8:30pm, Bloor Cinema), but this fact-based thriller about the evacuation of the eponymous Lebanese castle occupied by Israeli forces between 1982 and 2000 doesn’t offer much beyond claustrophobic atmosphere and suspense-movie machinations: every time a grunt haltingly proffers his backstory, it merely confirms that he’ll perish in the next Hezbollah rocket attack. Less heralded but far more satisfying is Shemi Zarhin’s Aviva, My Love (4*; May 4, 6pm, Sheppard Grande), an emotionally generous drama about a stifled housewife (Assi Levi) who makes a foray into writing only to be betrayed by her unscrupulous tutor. Like Nir Bergman’s excellent Broken Wings, Zarhin’s film nimbly eschews the explicitly political without ignoring Israel’s shifting social realities.