NEW YORK, NY, December 11, 2025 (Updated December 19, 2025) – The Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center announce the lineup for the 35th edition of the annual New York Jewish Film Festival (NYJFF), spotlighting the finest documentary, narrative, and short films from around the world that explore the Jewish experience. Among the oldest and most influential Jewish film festivals worldwide, NYJFF features a series of screenings at Film at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater (165 West 65th Street) from January 14 through January 28, 2026. 

The 2026 festival showcases nearly 30 features, documentaries, and shorts (eight narrative features, 13 documentary features, and eight short films), including the latest works by dynamic voices in international cinema. 

In the Opening Film of the festival, Once Upon My Mother, an inspiring, emotionally charged, and often humorous drama directed by Ken Scott and based on the autobiographical novel by Roland Perez, the matriarch of a bustling Jewish Moroccan family in the Parisian suburbs in the 1960s will do anything to give her youngest son the best possible life. This upbeat and miraculous film beautifully demonstrates the complex nuances of a mother’s devotion.  

This year’s Centerpiece Film is All I Had Was Nothingness, a new documentary by filmmaker Guillaume Ribot paying tribute to Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 epic, Shoah. The film tells the story of how Lanzmann accomplished the groundbreaking feat of creating an over nine-hour-long masterwork focusing on the evils of the Holocaust, revealing never-before-seen excerpts from more than 200 hours of unreleased footage.

The Closing Film, Fantasy Life, is a captivating comic drama of modern anxiety by Matthew Shear starring Amanda Peet as a wealthy but depressed middle-aged mom whose life intersects with a recently laid-off paralegal (played by Shear) hired to babysit her three daughters while her husband chases his dreams of living the rock-star life. The brilliant cast also includes Judd Hirsch, Andrea Martin, Bob Balaban, Jessica Harper, and Zosia Mamet. 

Also featured are two historic films highlighting the famous Polish comedy duo Dzigan and Schumacher. I Have Sinned (Al Khet), a long-unseen, genre-defying gem of the 1930s and the first Yiddish sound film made in Poland, mixes melodrama, comedy, and music to tell the story of Esther, a rabbi’s daughter who, during World War I, becomes pregnant by a German Jewish officer, abandons her baby, and flees to the U.S. Set in an orphanage and school near Łódź, Our Children (Unzere Kinder), is a fascinating, rarely seen classic from post–World War II Poland. The film combines fiction and documentary to address the then-recent suffering of a group of children who had survived the Holocaust and explores the potential of artistic expression as a method of processing trauma.

Additional notable highlights in this year’s festival include:

• Charles Grodin: Rebel with a Cause, an eye-opening documentary shedding light on the career and life of actor Charles Grodin and revealing his off-screen accomplishments as a social activist devoted to fighting for the wrongly imprisoned
• The Last Spy, a fascinating documentary centering on CIA spymaster Peter Sichel—aka the “Jewish James Bond”—who sat down for a wide-ranging interview about his singular life before he died in 2025 at age 102
• A Letter to David, a deeply personal documentary essay in which filmmaker Tom Shoval pays tribute to his friend David Cunio, who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz and taken hostage on October 7, 2023
• Maintenance Artist, the first feature documentary about pioneering public artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who became a staple of the 1960s New York avant-garde art scene
• Mazel Tov, an alternately touching and raucous drama about the fragility of family ties and the importance of tradition
• Orna and Ella, a poignant—and mouthwatering—documentary following the two women who owned an iconic Tel Aviv restaurant during the final days of its operation as they reflect on their partnership
• Sapiro v. Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford, an enlightening documentary that tells the story of Jewish lawyer Aaron Sapiro, who brought a libel suit against automobile tycoon Henry Ford in 1927, a landmark moment in our nation’s judicial history as the first time a Jew fought antisemitic slander in an American court

The full slate of films with descriptions and showtimes follows below. Details for in-person appearances will be announced at filmlinc.org and nyjff.org.

The films for the 2026 New York Jewish Film Festival were selected by Rachel Chanoff, Founding Director, THE OFFICE performing arts + film; Lisa Collins, filmmaker, writer, programmer, journalist, events producer, and guest curator of “Pearl Bowser and the 1970 Black Film Series” at the Jewish Museum; Juliane Camfield, director of Deutsches Haus at NYU; and Aviva Weintraub, Director, New York Jewish Film Festival, the Jewish Museum; with assistance from Sarah Eshaghian, film festival coordinator, the Jewish Museum.

Tickets will go on sale Thursday, December 18 at noon, with an early access period for Film at Lincoln Center and Jewish Museum Members beginning Tuesday, December 16 at noon. Tickets can be purchased at nyjff.org.

Tickets are $19; $16 for students, seniors (62+), and persons with disabilities; and $14 for FLC and JM Members. See more and save with 3+ Film Package ($17 for GP; $14 for students, seniors (62+), and persons with disabilities; and $12 for FLC Members; excludes Opening Film Once Upon My Mother. Opening Film tickets are $25; $22 for students, seniors (62+), and persons with disabilities; and $20 for FLC and JM Members.

SUPPORT 

Support for the New York Jewish Film Festival is provided by The Liman Foundation, Mimi and Barry Alperin, Sara and Axel Schupf, the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany in New York, Frederick Hertz, and other generous donors.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Stuart Hands, Helen Zuckerman, and Jeremie Abessira, Toronto Jewish Film Festival; Igor Shteyrenberg, Miami Jewish Film Festival; Yitzhak Tucker, Jewish Museum intern; and Isaac Zablocki, Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan.

FILM DESCRIPTIONS & SCHEDULE

All films screen at the Walter Reade Theater (165 W 65th Street) 

Opening Film
Once Upon My Mother
Ken Scott, 2025, France/Canada, 102m
French with English subtitles
New York Premiere

In this inspiring, emotionally charged, and often funny real-life drama set in the 1960s, the matriarch of a bustling Jewish immigrant family from Morocco living in the Parisian suburbs will do anything to give her youngest son the best possible life despite his physical setbacks. Born with a clubfoot, little Roland is unable to walk, yet his mother, Esther (Algerian French actress Leïla Bekhti, in a flamboyant, tour de force performance), is undeterred, her determination to help him live “normally” turning into an obsession. The film follows Roland into adulthood, as his maternal relationship grows increasingly complicated, even overwhelming. A fiery and wondrous adaptation of an autobiographical novel by French writer and radio personality Roland Perez, featuring music by Sylvie Vartan, who plays herself in the film, the upbeat and miraculous Once Upon My Mother beautifully demonstrates the complex phenomenon of a mother’s single-minded, against-all-odds devotion.

Thursday, January 15 at 1:00pm
Thursday, January 15 at 7:00pm

Centerpiece Film
All I Had Was Nothingness
Guillaume Ribot, 2025, France, 95m
French with English subtitles
New York Premiere

The 1985 film Shoah is a groundbreaking and utterly unique nine-hour-plus meditation on the earth-shattering evil of the Holocaust that collects eye-witness testimony from victims, perpetrators, and complicit bystanders. Filmmaker Claude Lanzmann culled his 12-years-in-the-making epic from endless hours of footage. With this new documentary, released on Shoah’s 40th anniversary, director Guillaume Ribot returns to this important work and pays homage to Lanzmann’s journey, telling the story of how he accomplished this feat and revealing never-before-seen excerpts from more than 200 hours of unreleased footage. The result is a tribute to a masterpiece and to the outsize personality of Lanzmann himself, as well as a revelation for followers of the filmmaker’s indefatigable archaeology of memory, a crucial addition to cinematic Holocaust scholarship.

Thursday, January 22 at 2:30pm
Thursday, January 22 at 7:45pm

Closing Film
Fantasy Life
Matthew Shear, 2025, U.S., 91m
NYC Premiere

In this captivating comic drama of modern anxiety, first-time writer-director-actor Matthew Shear (who’s appeared in films by Noah Baumbach and Nathan Silver) weaves an unexpected tale of connection. Amanda Peet stars as Dianne, a wealthy but depressed middle-aged mom whose life intersects with newly laid-off paralegal Sam (Shear) when he’s hired—by his therapist—to babysit her three daughters while her husband (Alessandro Nivola) is away chasing his dreams of living the rock-star life. As Sam and Dianne find surprising intimacies by bonding over shared neuroses about lives they feel they no longer control, Fantasy Life reveals itself as a deeply honest character study, culminating in an emotional blowout family dinner. The brilliant cast also stars Judd Hirsch, Andrea Martin, Bob Balaban, Jessica Harper, and Zosia Mamet.

Preceded by:
Animated New Yorkers: Joel
Jack Feldstein, 2024, U.S., 6m
New York Premiere

Animator Jack Feldstein returns to NYJFF with a portrait of a former ultra-Orthodox Jewish man describing his first ever physical encounter with a woman.

Wednesday, January 28 at 1:15pm
Wednesday, January 28 at 7:15pm

Along the River
Gerburg Rohde-Dahl, 2025, Germany, 62m
New York Premiere

A group of Israelis and Palestinians came together in Germany for a dialogue in the aftermath of October 7, 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza. This nine-day seminar allowed those taking part to express their unresolvable feelings of trauma, grief, and rage while at the same time encouraging them to find moments of empathy and compassion. For this powerful and momentous documentary, director Gerburg Rohde-Dahl visited the seminar, filming the participants during breaks between the sessions. The resulting work shows the tremendous attempts of people in agony to put aside politics and discover their shared humanity. Rohde-Dahl’s film shows that through the act of listening, all of us may live with and through our own pain.

Thursday, January 22 at 5:30pm

Charles Grodin: Rebel with a Cause
James L. Freedman, 2024, U.S., 93m

A beloved figure of American culture, Charles Grodin emerged as a star in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Thanks to his effortlessly brilliant work in films like The Heartbreak Kid, The Great Muppet Caper, Midnight Run, Beethoven, and Dave, he would remain a mainstay of comedy for generations of viewers. But Grodin’s off-screen accomplishments were even more dramatic: he was a social activist who devoted decades of his life to fighting for wrongly imprisoned people and reforming drug laws. Featuring interviews with collaborators, including Carol Burnett, Ellen Burstyn, Robert De Niro, Richard Kind, Marc Maron, Steve Martin, Elaine May, and Martin Short, as well as women for whom Mr. Grodin was instrumental in releasing from prison, this eye-opening documentary sheds light on Grodin’s career and life.

Sunday, January 25 at 6:15pm
Monday, January 26 at 1:00pm

The First Lady
Udi Nir, Sagi Bornstein, 2025, Germany/Israel, 82m
English, French, German, and Hebrew with English subtitles
New York Premiere

An urgent and daring documentary that champions human rights in the face of repression, The First Lady is a profile of Efrat Tilma, a transgender woman who fled Israel in the 1960s when, as a teenager, she was harassed and threatened by the police for wearing women’s clothes. Decades later, Tilma would go on to become a pioneering Israeli activist for LGBTQ+ rights as the country’s first transgender volunteer in the police force. Now, at 75, Tilma tries to wind her own way through the political and bureaucratic complexities of contemporary Israel, confronting discrimination and speaking out about the aggression and intimidation of the more conservative government—and representing the humanity of the endangered trans community.

Tuesday, January 20 at 8:00pm

Frontier / Frontera
Judith Colell, 2025, Spain/Belgium, 101m
Spanish with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

This remarkable historical thriller from Catalan director, screenwriter, and producer Judith Colell tells the gripping and incredible true story of the heroism of a Spanish village on the border with France in the Pyrenees during World War II. In 1943, a group of the town’s inhabitants, led by customs officer Manel Grau (Miki Esparbé), defied their country’s fascist regime to save Jews smuggled in from Nazi-occupied France, despite the shadow of recent trauma connected to the nation’s Civil War under Franco’s rule. Colell meticulously recreates this tense moment in history, shooting on vintage lenses and 35mm film, to evoke the desperation and anxiety of people trying to do the right and moral thing.

Wednesday, January 21 at 2:30pm
Tuesday, January 27 at 5:30pm

Labors of Love: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Szold
Abby Ginzberg, 2025, U.S., 79m
English and Hebrew with English subtitles
New York Premiere

A visionary leader and one of history’s most influential, yet under-recognized, American Jewish women, Henrietta Szold left an indelible mark on the 20th century. She founded Hadassah in 1912, creating a vital link between American women and communities in Palestine. Through this organization, she established the region’s modern health care system, built on a mandate to treat Arabs and Jews equally. Later, she spearheaded Youth Aliyah, an operation that rescued 11,000 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Europe. Peabody Award–winning director Abby Ginzberg’s heartfelt documentary offers a thought-provoking look at a woman who reshaped history through compassion and an unwavering belief in the power of humanity.

Tuesday, January 20 at 5:30pm

The Last Spy
Katharina Otto-Bernstein, 2025, U.S./Germany, 106m
English and German with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

Before he died in 2025 at age 102, CIA spy master Peter Sichel—aka the “Jewish James Bond,” as some friends called him—sat down for a wide-ranging interview. The result is a fascinating conversation that provides the backbone for Katharina Otto-Bernstein’s gripping documentary. After perilously immigrating with his wine merchant family from Nazi Germany to France and then to New York, he enlisted in the U.S. Army to fight Hitler. Soon enough he is recognized for his ability to turn German POWs into spies—the beginning of a brilliant and dangerous career that would lead to his taking part in the formation of the CIA and the country’s prolonged involvement in the Cold War. Sichel recounts his experiences with honesty and wit, which the director embellishes with historical images and footage to create a real-life noir.

Sunday, January 18 at 3:30pm

A Letter to David
Tom Shoval, 2025, Israel/U.S., 74m
Hebrew with English subtitles
New York Premiere

David Cunio was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz and taken hostage on October 7, 2023, along with his wife and two baby daughters. Filmmaker Tom Shoval was shocked and horrified to learn of this abduction amidst the fear and terror of that fateful day, as David had played a lead role in Shoval’s 2013 film, Youth. Shoval decided to revisit that film and its behind-the-scenes material to pay tribute to his friend and collaborator. A Letter to David is a unique and deeply moving film that does not use footage from the October 7 attacks but rather weaves together raw footage, audition tapes, and scenes from the making of Youth. This deeply personal documentary essay expands into an examination of how cinema and memory can testify to the unimaginable.

Monday, January 26 at 7:00pm

Maintenance Artist
Toby Perl Freilich, 2025, U.S., 95m

After becoming a mother, pioneering artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles published a daring manifesto: from that moment on, all of her childcare and household maintenance would be acts of performance art. The manifesto propelled her into the male-dominated 1960s avant-garde art world. This feminist artist and observant Jew soon became a staple of the New York scene, using her revelatory experimentations to link child-raising, cleaning, and sanitation as an interrogation into how maintenance work is valued and connected to issues of class, race, and gender. Toby Perl Freilich’s delightful documentary reveals that Ukeles—who would become the first artist-in-residence at the NYC Sanitation Department—draws explicitly from Jewish tradition, making it more inclusive and less patriarchal, and reflects Jewish values of social justice.

Monday, January 19 at 3:30pm

Mazel Tov
Adrián Suar, 2025, Argentina, 97m
Spanish with English subtitles
New York Premiere

Argentinean actor and director Adrián Suar has made an alternately touching and raucous drama about the fragility of family ties and the importance of tradition with his engrossing Mazel Tov. Suar stars as Dario Roitman, who decides to make the trip from the U.S. back to his hometown in Argentina to attend both his sister’s wedding and his niece’s Bat Mitzvah; yet just as he’s about to board the plane he finds out that his father has died. Because Dario has been estranged from his dad and brothers, this creates considerable complications, leading to emotional reckonings that will either threaten to break the family apart or heal long-standing wounds. Suar’s film is a quintessential story of familial dysfunction told with a healthy dose of humor.

Thursday, January 15 at 4:00pm
Saturday, January 17 at 7:00pm

My Underground Mother
Marisa Fox, 2025, U.S., 86m
Czech, English, German, Hebrew, Polish, and Yiddish with English subtitles
NYC Premiere

A daughter investigates her mother’s secret past, discovering astonishing revelations about her life as a spy and freedom fighter against the Nazis in this absorbing and intimate documentary debut from New York journalist Marisa Fox. Twenty years after the death of her mother, Tamar, Fox begins to piece together a puzzle that spans Israel, Poland, and beyond, leading her to the discovery of a teenage sisterhood that formed within a Jewish women’s forced labor camp in Nazi-occupied Sudetenland to stand in brave resistance to the evils of the Holocaust, including sexual assault. Both a tale of female empowerment during World War II and a contemporary journey of a woman coming to terms with a parent’s unreconciled legacy, Fox’s film is an ever-expanding story of one woman’s refusal to be defined by trauma.

Monday, January 19 at 6:30pm
Tuesday, January 20 at 2:45pm

Neshoma
Sandra Beerends, 2024, Netherlands, 88m
Dutch and English with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

In this beautifully composed work, filmmaker Sandra Beerends uses a rich trove of archival footage to resurrect the vibrant Jewish communities of Amsterdam in the years before World War II changed these lives and landscapes forever. Rather than simply telling a visual history through testimonies or talking heads, Beerends employs this vivid historical material to create a film that exists in the space between documentary and fiction, inventing the life of a 17-year-old girl named Rusha as she, her friends, and her family navigate an environment of post–World War I optimism, followed by economic depression, the subsequent rise of fascism, and finally occupation. Neshoma—named for the Yiddish Hebrew word for soul—is a reminder of a way of life that even the monstrous evils of the 20th century could not entirely eradicate.

Sunday, January 18 at 6:15pm

Orna and Ella
Tomer Heymann, 2025, Israel, 54m
Hebrew with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

When the renowned Tel Aviv restaurant Orna and Ella closed after 26 years, the city said farewell to a landmark culinary destination. This mouthwatering documentary, shot during the final days of the restaurant, was directed by Tomer Heymann (Paper Dolls, Mr. Gaga), who has not only been a major award-winning voice in Israeli nonfiction cinema for more than two decades but also worked at Orna and Ella for six years himself—and came out there as a gay man in his twenties. In addition to the beloved sweet potato latkes, homemade bread, and ice cream, this Tel Aviv institution was a bastion of open-mindedness. Humorous and poignant, his film stands as a complex testament to the two women who owned the restaurant, Orna Agmon and Ella Shine. They are refreshingly candid as they look back on the ups and downs of their partnership, while Heymann’s film also pays tribute to a recent past that has begun to feel increasingly distant.

Preceded by:
A Bit of Everything and Matzoh Balls Too
Emily Lobsenz, 2025, U.S., 19m
New York Premiere

A tribute to the history and magical healing powers of that most durable of Jewish comfort foods—matzoh ball soup—and the personal family stories that surround it.

Sunday, January 25 at 3:30pm
Tuesday, January 27 at 2:45pm

Out of Exile: The Photography of Fred Stein
Peter Stein, Dawn Freer, 2021, U.S., 86m
New York City Premiere

This stylish portrait of German Jewish photographer Fred Stein transports the viewer back to some of the most dramatic historical moments of the mid-20th century. After fleeing the Nazis in the 1930s, the Dresden-born Stein relocated to Paris and then New York, becoming a renowned street photographer and portraitist, capturing the heartbreak of living amidst war without losing sight of his subjects’ essential humanity. This documentary offers a visually marvelous testament to the artist and his work, as well as to the son who refused to let his father’s legacy fall through the cracks of history.

Sunday, January 25 at 12:45pm

Real Estate
Anat Maltz, 2024, Israel/France, 99m
Hebrew with English subtitles
NYC Premiere

Set over the course of one anxious day, this comic gem, the debut feature from director-writer Anat Matlz, touches upon resonant and universal themes of belonging, economic instability, and unsettled romance. Maltz follows Tamara (Victoria Rosovsky) and Adam (Leib Lev Levin), a young couple about to become parents who are being forced to move out of their enviable Tel Aviv apartment. Their hunt for a new home in the more affordable Haifa, where Adam was raised, is the catalyst for major reckonings about their relationship, and summons a host of fears and fantasies about the path their life together is taking. Real Estate is the touching story of an unmoored generation whose financial future is more precarious than ever, yet who still cling to ideals of love, career, and family.

Wednesday, January 21 at 8:00pm

The Safe House / La cache
Lionel Baier, 2025, Switzerland/Luxembourg/France, 90m
French with English subtitles
New York Premiere

Swiss filmmaker Lionel Baier gives the events of May ’68 in Paris an unusually lighthearted but multilayered treatment in this winsome portrait of a 9-year-old and his extended stay in his grandparents’ apartment while his parents join the earth-shaking student protests exploding all over the city. As the demonstrations outside swell, the family reunion inside the walls expands to include his artistic and intellectual-minded uncles and outspoken Odessa-born great-grandmother, until they are joined by an unexpected guest. Adapted from the novel La cache by Christophe Boltanski—a nephew of the renowned French artist Christian Boltanski—The Safe House is an entertaining portrait of a free-spirited Jewish family that recreates a vibrant and intense historical moment from a surprising perspective.

Saturday, January 24 at 7:00pm
Monday, January 26 at 4:00pm

Sapiro v. Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford
Gaylen Ross, 2025, U.S./Canada, 69m
New York Premiere

He was both the wealthiest man in America and notoriously antisemitic. But automobile tycoon Henry Ford met his match in 1927 when a Jewish lawyer named Aaron Sapiro brought a lawsuit against him. Ford had launched a smear campaign, accusing the lawyer, who was dedicated to helping struggling farmers unionize, of being a communist and part of an international “Jewish conspiracy.” Sapiro’s subsequent libel case against Ford’s hate speech—a landmark moment in our nation’s judicial history for being the first time a Jew fought antisemitic slander in an American court—forms the center of this enlightening documentary, which tells the ultimate American David and Goliath story. Featuring Ben Shenkman voicing the words of Aaron Sapiro.

Wednesday, January 21 at 5:30pm 
Wednesday, January 28 at 4:30pm

I Have Sinned / Al Khet
Aleksander Marten, 1936, Poland, 95m
Yiddish with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere of Digital Restoration

This long-unseen, genre-defying gem of the 1930s was the first Yiddish sound film made in Poland, mixing melodrama, comedy, and musical to tell the story of Esther, a rabbi’s daughter who becomes pregnant by a German Jewish officer during World War I. When the Russian Army advances into the family’s village, Esther (Rachel Holzer) decides to abandon her baby and flee to the U.S. Spanning 20 years of history and family tumult, I Have Sinned (Al Khet) also features the famous Polish comedy team Dzigan and Schumacher in crucial roles as a duo determined to reunite Esther with her child. This restoration, carried out by the National Center for Jewish Film, gives audiences the chance to see a rare landmark that had been out of circulation for decades. New English translation, subtitles and digital restoration by the National Center for Jewish Film.

Sunday, January 18 at 12:30pm

Our Children / Unzere Kinder
Natan Gross, Shaul Goskind, 1948, Poland, 35mm, 68m
Yiddish with English subtitles

In this restoration of a fascinating, rarely seen Yiddish classic from post-WWII Poland, filmmakers Natan Gross and Shaul Goskind mix fiction and documentary to address the then-recent atrocities of the Holocaust, setting their story in an actual orphanage and school near Lodz. Here, the famous Yiddish comedy duo of Shimon Dzigan and Israel Schumacher perform Sholem Alecheim’s play Kasrilevke Is Burning for an audience of Jewish children who had survived the Holocaust, which leads to a discussion about the young people’s experiences during the war. This singular document of survival stands out for its candor and complexity, and the way in which it suggests artistic expression as a way to process trauma. Author and critic J. Hoberman wrote, “Our Children is not only among the first films about the Holocaust, it is also the first to critique its representation.” Restored by The National Center for Jewish Film.

Monday, January 19 at 1:00pm

NYJFF 2026 Shorts Program
74m

This program includes Laetitia Clareton’s The Suitcase, Tomi Joelah Drucker’s Blood Ties, Jonas Lajboschitz’s Parents, Peter Decherney’s The Cave Synagogue, Yael Bridge’s The Last Jews of Guantanamo, and Shari Albert’s Double Happiness.

Tuesday, January 27 at 8:15pm

The Suitcase
Laetitia Clareton, 2024, Canada, 5m
French with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

A Quebecoise filmmaker uses family photos and archival images to send a message to her long-deceased grandmother in an attempt to establish her own path toward healing.

Blood Ties
Tomi Joelah Drucker, 2025, Israel, 13m
Hebrew with English subtitles
New York Premiere

Two teenage sisters must come to terms with their grief after the death of their mother, while at the same time seeing and understanding one another for the first time, in this delicate tale of mourning.

Parents
Jonas Lajboschitz, 2024, Denmark, 18m
Danish with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

The scars of the past haunt an unsettled present in this emotional drama about a Jewish man in Stockholm who reconnects with an ex-girlfriend on her wedding day and summons up a tragic memory.

The Cave Synagogue
Peter Decherney, 2024, U.S./Uganda, 8m
Luganda and English with English subtitles
New York Premiere

The Ugandan Jewish elder J.J. Keki, whose father was among the first generation of Ugandans who converted to Judaism in the early 20th century, makes a pilgrimage with his sons to the secret synagogue where Jews prayed during Idi Amin’s reign.

The Last Jews of Guantanamo
Yael Bridge, 2024, U.S., 13m
Spanish with English subtitles
New York Premiere

In this precious and intimate portrait of sacred ritual, two octogenarian women prepare for and celebrate their Bat Mitzvahs in Guantanamo, Cuba, where only around 50 people (out of 200,000) are Jewish.

Double Happiness
Shari Albert, 2025, U.S., 16m

In this moving, comic-tinged romantic drama revolving around family and food and set during the Christmas holidays, a surprising bond forms between a Jewish widow and a Chinese American restaurateur, both seeking connection after losing loved ones.

 

SCHEDULE OF FILMS
All screenings are at the Walter Reade Theater.

Thursday, January 15

1:00pm: Once Upon My Mother (102m)

4:00pm: Mazel Tov (97m)

7:00pm: Once Upon My Mother (102m) 

 

Saturday, January 17

7:00pm: Mazel Tov (97m)

 

Sunday, January 18

12:30pm: I Have Sinned (95m)

3:30pm: The Last Spy (86m)

6:15pm:  Neshoma (86m)

 

Monday, January 19

1:00pm: Our Children (68m)

3:30pm:  Maintenance Artist (95m)

6:30pm: My Underground Mother (86m)

 

Tuesday, January 20

2:45pm: My Underground Mother (86m)

5:30pm: Labors of Love: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Szold (79m)

8:00pm: The First Lady (82m)

 

Wednesday, January 21 

2:30pm: Frontier (101m)

5:30pm: Sapiro v. Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford (69m) 

8:00pm: Real Estate (99m)

 

Thursday, January 22 

2:30pm:  All I Had Was Nothingness (95m)

5:30pm: Along the River (62m)

7:45pm: All I Had Was Nothingness (95m) 

 

Saturday, January 24

7:00pm: The Safe House (90m)

 

Sunday, January 25

12:45pm: Out of Exile: The Photography of Fred Stein (86m)

3:30pm: Orna and Ella (54m) preceded by A Bit of Everything and Matzoh Balls Too (19m)

6:15pm: Charles Grodin: Rebel with a Cause (93m)

 

Monday, January 26

1:00pm: Charles Grodin: Rebel with a Cause (93m)

4:00pm: The Safe House (90m)

7:00pm: A Letter to David (74m)

 

Tuesday, January 27 

2:45pm: Orna and Ella (54m) preceded by A Bit of Everything and Matzoh Balls Too (19m)

5:30pm: Frontier (101m)

8:15pm: NYJFF 2026 Shorts Program 

The Suitcase (5m)

Blood Ties (12m) 

Parents (20m) 

The Cave Synagogue (8m)

The Last Jews of Guantanamo (13m) 

Double Happiness (16m)

 

Wednesday, January 28

1:15pm: Fantasy Life (91m) preceded by Animated New Yorkers: Joel (6m)

4:30pm: Sapiro v. Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford (69m) 

7:15pm: Fantasy Life (91m) preceded by Animated New Yorkers: Joel (6m)

THE JEWISH MUSEUM
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Founded in 1969, FLC is committed to preserving the excitement of the theatrical experience for all audiences, advancing high-quality film journalism through the publication of Film Comment, cultivating the next generation of film industry professionals through our FLC Academies, and enriching the lives of all who engage with our programs.

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Film at Lincoln Center receives generous, year-round support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. American Airlines is the Official Airline of Film at Lincoln Center. For more information, visit filmlinc.org and follow @filmlinc on X, Instagram, and Bluesky.