Film Festivals
29th St. Louis Jewish Film Festival Runs Now Through April 18
The St. Louis Jewish Film Festival has begun is 29th season and hosted a special opening night celebration on Sunday, April 7 at B&B Theater in Creve Coeur.
“On October 7, 2023, Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack caused the evacuation and cessation of all activities at Sapir College in Sderot, Israel—home to its premier film program. Sapir students were just weeks away from presenting their final film projects at the annual film festival at Cinema South. In solidarity with Israel, and to specifically draw attention to the Israeli filmmakers coming out of Sapir College, the St. Louis Jewish Film Festival featured five students’ films. Attached to each one is a one-of-a-kind story about the directors, actors, and other individuals who participated in the making of the film whose lives have been turned upside down in the days since October 7, 2023. With Israel fighting for its very existence, these films can be viewed from a new angle that highlights the very human fears and hopes of the Israeli people.”
The film festival runs now through April 18.
See the full schedule of movies: https://jccstl.com/arts-ideas/st-louis-jewish-film-festival/events-film-schedule/
April 9 – Comedy Night
My Neighbor Adolf
3:30pm
Colombia, May 1960, just a few days after the abduction of the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann by Mossad agents in Argentina. Polsky, a lonely and grumpy Holocaust survivor, lives in the remote Colombian countryside. One day, when a mysterious old German man moves in next-door, he suspects that his new neighbor is… Adolf Hitler. But, to gather evidence, he will need to be closer to his neighbor than he would like. So close that the two could almost become friends.
Director: Leon Prudovsky
Country: Israel/UK/Germany
Language: English
Duration: 87 minutes
Remembering Gene Wilder
7pm
This beloved Hollywood star of such films as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Stir Crazy, The Producers, and many more, shares narration duties about his own artistic life, his collaborations with Mel Brooks and others, and the two wives who he loved with all his heart, and who loved him just as much. His journey towards being America’s greatest film comic is as unique as his own brand and style.
Enjoy a pre- and post-show talk with Emmy Award winner and Writer/Co-Director, Glenn Kirschbaum!
Director: Ron Frank
Country: USA
Duration: 90 minutes
Language: English
April 11 – Overcoming Adversity
Exodus 91
3:30pm
This hybrid documentary film follows Israeli diplomat, Asher Naim, on a seemingly insurmountable mission to bring 15,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. As Asher learns more about these African Jews, he finds himself between worlds and facing a crisis of faith in himself and his country. Is his government acting out of altruism towards their fellow Jews or is it using the issue as part of an elaborate publicity stunt against claims that Zionism is Racism.
Director: Micah Smith
Country: Israel
Language: English and Various Languages with English subtitles
Genre: DocuDrama
Duration: 87 minutes
The Way To Happiness
7pm
Saul Birnbaum is a “hidden child”, separated from his parents at the age of 6 to escape the upcoming Shoah, sent by a Kindertransport abroad, from Vienna to Brussels. Now, in 1987, Saul is an aspiring film producer who owns a popular cinema-themed deli. While helping a young Chilean refugee to write and direct the story of his childhood, Saul unexpectedly falls in love and is forced to confront his past, and how he escaped the Holocaust.
Director: Nicolas Steil
Country: Belgium
Language: French with English subtitles
Genre: Feature Comedy/Drama
Duration: 107 minutes
April 14 – Lovers’ Sunday
Matchmaking
3:30pm
Moti Bernstein is the son every mother wants, a student every Rabbi loves to teach, the ideal Yeshiva study mate, the perfect match for every bride. He has it all: a good family, a brilliant mind, and he is not bad looking either. In search of a wife, he will meet the best girls in the Jewish orthodox world but will fall for the one girl he can never have. The only one he wants.
Director: Erez Tadmor
Country: Israel
Language: Hebrew with English subtitles
Genre: Romance/Comedy
Duration: 94 minutes
The Story of Annette Zelman
7pm
In 1942 Paris, Jewish-born Annette Zelman and Catholic Jean Jausion fall in love and wish to get married. However, Jean’s parents are opposed to the match and report Annette to the Gestapo, sending Jean into despair. This tale of love and resistance plumbs the depths of human passion, prejudice and betrayal. The film is based on actual events told in the book, Informing on Jews during the Occupation by Laurent Joly.
Director: Philippe Le Guay
Country: France
Language: French with English Subtitles
Genre: Drama
Duration: 92 minutes
April 16 – Potpourri
Heritage Day/The Catskills – Double Feature
3:30pm
Heritage Day
Excerpt from Heritage Day 2 from Lara Everly on Vimeo.
Eight-year-old Evie becomes obsessed with playing Holocaust after dressing up as her estranged grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, for “Heritage Day” at school. Inspired by a true event, this dark comedy explores the strife between mother and child, and how society reckons with its past.
Writer/Director: Lara Everly
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre: Short Film/Dark Comedy
Duration: 20 minutes
The Catskills
With a trove of lost-and-found archival footage and a cast of characters endowed with the gift of gab, The Catskills journeys into the storied mountain getaway north of New York City that served as refuge for Jewish immigrants fleeing poverty as well as a lavish playground for affluent Jewish families.
Writer/Director: Lex Gillespie
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre: Documentary
Duration: 81 minutes
Love Gets A Room
7pm
Inspired by true events during the 1942 Nazi occupation of Poland, this is a story of a Jewish stage actress who must make the gut-wrenching decision to follow her heart or to escape the Warsaw ghetto. The film is a romantic tale of love and survival in the face of harrowing circumstances.
Director: Rodrigo Cortéz
Country: Spain/UK
Language: English/Various dialect with English subtitles
Genre: Romantic Drama
Duration: 93 minutes
April 18, 2024 – Art & Romance
Vishniac
3:30pm
B&B Theater – Creve Coeur
From the cosmopolitan streets of pre-war Berlin to the shtetls in Poland and Lithuania to the Princeton offices of Albert Einstein, VISHNIAC takes viewers on a journey, through the lens of one of the foremost photographers of the 20th century. Roman Vishniac is best known for having traversed Eastern Europe from 1935 through 1938, on assignment for the American Joint Distribution Committee, to photograph Jewish life in Eastern Europe. The purpose of the photographs was to raise funds for impoverished Jewish communities. Few predicted that less than a decade later, these communities would be wiped out, and that Vishniac’s photographs would provide the last visual records of an entire world.
Director: Laura Bialis
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre: Documentary
Duration: 90 minutes
The Shadow Of The Day
7pm
These are the most difficult years in which to set a love story. Set in a provincial Italian town in the late 1930’s. Luciano, like most Italians, is a Fascist sympathizer, and the owner of a restaurant. Nevertheless, he believes he can live his life according to rules he has set himself, in a sort of isolation from the outside world. But at the window overlooking the old square, along with the worrying signs of something that is about to happen in the world, a young woman appears bearing a secret. Her name is Anna, and she manages to get a job in the restaurant. From that point on, life will never be the same for Luciano; and among the dangers he faces, there is the greatest of all: love.
Writer/Director: Giuseppe Piccioni
Country: Italy
Language: Italian with English Subtitles
Genre: Romantic Drama
Duration: 120 minutes
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