The Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center Announce the 32nd Annual New York Jewish Film Festival

Still from opening night film "America" by Ofir Raul Graizer

Release Date: December 8, 2022

The Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center Announce the 32nd Annual New York Jewish Film Festival

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January 12-23, 2023

NEW YORK, NY, December 8, 2022 – The Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center will present the 32nd annual New York Jewish Film Festival (NYJFF) from January 12 through 23, 2023. Among the oldest and most influential Jewish film festivals worldwide, NYJFF presents the finest documentary, narrative, and short films from around the world that explore the Jewish experience. 

The 2023 edition will feature in-person screenings at the Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, NYC, and two virtual offerings. The NYJFF line-up showcases 29 wide-ranging and exciting features and shorts (21 features and 8 shorts), including the latest works by dynamic voices in international cinema, as well as the world premiere of a new 4K restoration of the groundbreaking 1997 documentary A Life Apart: Hasidism in America by Oren Rudavsky and Menachem Daum. 

In the Opening Film, America, director Ofir Raul Graizer follows up on the international success of his acclaimed drama The Cakemaker with an enveloping and visually sumptuous story about sexual identity and personal trauma, following a swimming coach living in Chicago whose return to his home country, Israel, after his father dies, triggers a series of life-altering events for him and his childhood friend.

This year’s Centerpiece is Charlotte Salomon: Life and the Maiden, receiving its world premiere at the NYJFF. This new documentary on artist Charlotte Salomon by Delphine Coulin and Muriel Coulin offers an intimate and expansive look at the young woman who, though she was murdered in Auschwitz at age 26, completed an astounding amount of art, including some 1,300 paintings, before her deportation. The film delves into her youth in Berlin, her escape to the south of France after the rise of the Nazis, her love affair with a music teacher, and the creative explosion that resulted in her brilliant body of multimedia work.

The Closing Film is Alegría. Filmmaker Violeta Salama makes her moving and wise feature debut with this layered, comic-tinged drama about women breaking free from patriarchal tradition in a contemporary Jewish diasporic community. Set in Melilla, an autonomous, multicultural Spanish city on Africa’s north coast, the film centers on Alegría, a single mother who has returned to her hometown from Mexico for her niece’s Orthodox Jewish wedding, although Alegría does not acknowledge her own Jewish heritage. Salama’s film sensitively depicts Alegría coming to terms with her roots and the cultural past she rejected, while reconnecting with family and friends.

Several other notable highlights in this year’s festival include June Zero, Where Life Begins, I Am Not, This Is National Wake, and Krzysztof Wodiczko: The Art of Un-War.

In June Zero, from American filmmaker Jake Paltrow, the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, architect of the mass murder of Jews during World War II, is revisited from the three disparate perspectives of Eichmann’s Jewish Moroccan prison guard; an Israeli police investigator for the prosecution and a Holocaust survivor; and a 13-year-old Jewish Libyan immigrant. Based on true accounts, Paltrow’s gripping and surprising new drama reminds us that the same histories are experienced differently by people all over the world.

Set in the bucolic Calabrian countryside during the citron harvest, Where Life Begins, an intimate and elegantly rendered romantic drama about family, faith, and freedom, is the directorial debut of veteran French actor Stéphane Freiss. The film follows the blossoming attraction between the farm owner and a rabbi’s daughter who is questioning the constraints of her religious upbringing.

Acclaimed filmmaker Tomer Heymann’s latest documentary, I Am Not, is a deeply emotional work that follows the life-changing journey of Oren, who was adopted from Guatemala by an Israeli family when he was a baby and now returns to his birth country to seek out his biological family and sense of self.

In This Is National Wake, her energetic and revelatory directorial debut, Mirissa Neff tells the amazing story of National Wake, a group of young Jewish and Black musicians who dared to start a band in 1979 against the rupture and racism of South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Maria Niro’s compelling documentary Krzysztof Wodiczko: The Art of Un-War pays tribute to the artistry and political commitment of Polish artist Krzysztof Wodiczko, whose large-scale works, often projected onto the facades of major architectural monuments, disrupt the complacency of a public increasingly inured to violence.

Several films in this year’s line-up incorporate the Yiddish language, including:    

  • Jewish Life in Lwow, Shaul Goskind and Yitzhak Goskind. This rarely screened 1939 documentary short portrait of the daily lives of Jews in Lwow, Poland, now Lviv, Ukraine, home to a thriving Jewish community before World War II, captures a prosperous world on the precipice of obliteration by the coming Nazi invasion.
  • A Letter to Mother, Joseph Green and Leon Trystand. 35mm film restoration by the National Center for Jewish Film. A classic of Yiddish cinema, A Letter to Mother (also known as The Eternal Song) was among the final Yiddish films made in Poland before the Nazi invasion. Set in the years leading up to World War I, it follows a mother of three children trying to provide for her family after her husband moves to America.
  • A Life Apart: Hasidism in America, Oren Rudavsky and Menachem Daum. World Premiere of 4K Restoration. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, this groundbreaking documentary was among the first American films to offer a full, distinctive, inside look at the Hasidic Jewish communities that found their most vital enclaves in America after mass migrations post-World War II.
  • SHTTL, Ady Walter. SHTTL, an ambitious and technically astonishing film, tells the expansive, multi-character story of a Jewish village in Ukraine on the border with Poland 24 hours before the Nazi invasion that will destroy it. The film was shot in a single take in Ukraine and features a remarkable cast speaking Yiddish and Ukrainian.

 

See below for the slate of films with full descriptions and schedule. Dates for Q&A sessions to be announced. 

The films for the 2023 New York Jewish Film Festival have been selected by Rachel Chanoff, Director, THE OFFICE performing arts + film; Lisa Collins, filmmaker, digital journalist/writer/editor, programmer, and events/film producer; Indigo Sparks, performance artist and producer; and Aviva Weintraub, director, New York Jewish Film Festival, the Jewish Museum with Dan Sullivan, assistant programmer, Film at Lincoln Center as advisor, and assistance from Ana Maroto, film festival coordinator, the Jewish Museum.

TICKETS

Member ticket presale for NYJFF tickets for Film at Lincoln Center and Jewish Museum members begins on December 13 at noon, and tickets for the general public will be on sale beginning December 15 at noon. Tickets can be purchased at nyjff.org. Members will be sent a unique link for Virtual Cinema pre-sale access. 

In-theater ticket prices are $15 for the general public; $12 for students, seniors, and persons with disabilities; and $10 for FLC and JM members. See everything (excluding Opening Film)      and save with the NYJFF All-Access Pass for just $89 (approx. 40% savings!)!

Esther Takac’s The Narrow Bridge and Mordechai Vardi’s Barren will be available on FLC Virtual Cinema at noon starting January 23. Virtual tickets are $10 each or $8 for FLC and JM members. Both films can be purchased together as a Bundle for $15 or $12 for FLC and JM members.

One rental per account. The FLC Virtual Cinema app is available on Apple TV, iPhone, and iPad via the Apple App Store and on Fire TV Stick via the Amazon Appstore. Learn more here. For ticketing assistance or questions about FLC Virtual Cinema, please email virtualsupport@filmlinc.org.

SUPPORT

The New York Jewish Film Festival is made possible by the Martin and Doris Payson Fund for Film and Media.

Generous support is also provided by Wendy Fisher and the Kirsh Foundation, The Liman Foundation, Sara and Axel Schupf, Louise and Frank Ring, Mimi and Barry Alperin, the Ike, Molly and Steven Elias Foundation, Amy Rubenstein, and Steven and Sheira Schacter.

Additional support is provided by the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany in New York, the Polish Cultural Institute New York, Villa Albertine, and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Stuart Hands, Toronto Jewish Film Festival; Jessica Rosner; Isaac Zablocki, Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan; Marlene Josephs, Linda Lipson, Volunteers; Ksenia Filipovich, Reese Neal, Interns.

 

FILM DESCRIPTIONS & SCHEDULE

All in-person films screen at the Walter Reade Theater (165 West 65th St.) unless otherwise noted as a virtual presentation.

Each virtual presentation will be available for viewing beginning at 12pm ET on the below dates and available to rent for up to five days after the specified premiere date with 24-hour playback.

 

Opening Film

America

Ofir Raul Graizer

Israel/Germany/Czech Republic, 2022, 127 min.

Hebrew with English subtitles

N.Y. Premiere

Following the international success of his acclaimed romantic drama The Cakemaker, writer, director, and editor Ofir Raul Graizer presents an enveloping and visually sumptuous story about sexual identity and personal trauma, following a man whose return to Israel triggers a series of life-altering events. Having lived in Chicago for a decade, Israeli swimming coach Eli (Michael Moshonov) goes back to Tel Aviv after the sudden death of his estranged father. While there, he visits his childhood friend Yotam (Ofri Biterman) and Yotam’s fiancée, Iris (Oshrat Ingedashet), with whom he runs a flower shop; however, the reunion leads to a shocking turn of events that will affect everyone’s lives forever. The patient storytelling style Graizer forged in his previous film is in full evidence in America, a penetrating, tactile study of the inner lives of three people who will forever be physically and emotionally entwined, set in dramatic natural locations.

Thursday, January 12, 8:15pm    

 

Centerpiece

Charlotte Salomon: Life and the Maiden

Delphine Coulin and Muriel Coulin

France, 2022, 75 min.

French with English subtitles

World Premiere

The extraordinary life of artist Charlotte Salomon has inspired novels, plays, operas, ballets, and even an animated film. This new documentary by Delphine Coulin and Muriel Coulin offers an intimate and expansive new look at the young woman who, though she was murdered in Auschwitz at age 26, completed an astounding amount of art, including some 1,300 paintings, before her deportation. Narrated as though from her own voice and featuring a cascade of her images, the film delves into her youth in Berlin, her escape to the south of France after the rise of the Nazis, her love affair with a music teacher, and the creative explosion that resulted in her brilliant body of multimedia work—ahead-of-their-time creations mixing gouache, text, and music. The film features the voices of Vicky Krieps, Mathieu Amalric, and Hanna Schygulla.

Wednesday, January 18, 12pm & 6pm

 

Closing Film

Alegría

Violeta Salama

Spain, 2021, 104 min.

Spanish and Chelja with English subtitles

Violeta Salama makes her moving and wise feature debut with this layered, comic-tinged drama about women breaking free from patriarchal tradition in a contemporary Jewish diasporic community. Set in Melilla, an autonomous, multicultural Spanish city on Africa’s north coast, the film centers on Alegría (Cecilia Suárez), a single mother who has returned to her hometown from Mexico for her niece Yael’s Orthodox Jewish wedding, although Alegría does not acknowledge her own Jewish heritage. Salama’s film sensitively depicts Alegría coming to terms with her roots and the cultural past she has rejected, while reconnecting with family and friends. It features a standout performance from Suárez and a gorgeous evocation of a fascinating and beautiful corner of the world not often seen on-screen.

Sunday, January 22, 2:30pm & 8pm

 

MAIN SLATE FILMS

 

Barren

Mordechai Vardi

Israel, 2022, 108 min.

Hebrew with English subtitles

U.S. Premiere

An ultra-Orthodox twenty-something couple in Israel, unable to conceive children, find their lives upended in this provocative drama about faith and sexual exploitation. After Naftali travels to Ukraine during Rosh Hashanah to pray for a child, his wife, Feigi, is left alone with her in-laws, who invite the rabbi Elijah for the holiday. Claiming to be a healer of barren women, Elijah convinces Feigi to undergo his treatment, starting a chain of events that lead to crises of belief, conscience, and marriage for the couple once Naftali returns. Director Mordechai Vardi based his film on true events, raising fundamental theological questions and revealing the vulnerability of women living within such enclosed religious environments.

Monday, January 23, 12pm (virtual screening)

 

Exodus 91

Micah Smith

Israel, 2022, 90 min.

Hebrew, Amharic, and English with English subtitles

N.Y. Premiere

In his vital, gripping film, director Micah Smith brings a historical moment to vivid life through a hybrid of documentary and dramatic narrative. Smith returns to the politically complex May 1991 event known as Operation Solomon. Israeli diplomat Asher Naim travels to Ethiopia to act as negotiator for the release of 15,000 Ethiopian Jews, hoping to save them from a country plagued by famine and civil war. This seemingly altruistic mission, however, is thrown into doubt and skepticism when Naim begins to suspect the rescue mission might be a publicity stunt for his home country, and the Ethiopians wonder whether they have been little more than pawns. At the same time that the escalating situation on the ground becomes combustible, Naim’s crisis of faith grows. 

Sunday, January 22, 12pm & 5:30pm

 

Farewell, Mr. Haffmann

Fred Cavayé

France, 2021, 116 min.

French with English subtitles

N.Y.C. Premiere

In this acclaimed, engrossing drama set in Paris during the Nazi occupation, beloved French actor Daniel Auteuil (Jean de Florette) stars as Joseph Haffmann, a Jewish jeweler who sends his family away to safety, with the intention of joining them later. Haffmann has decided to hand off the business to his trusted assistant François Mercier (Gilles Lellouche) and Mercier’s wife, Blanche (Sara Giraudeau), who are recently married and struggling to conceive a child—though Haffmann’s plans go awry when he is unable to escape the city under the watch of German authorities. After Haffmann returns home, the Merciers agree to let him stay in their basement, but they strike a deal that will change the course of all their lives. Based on a play by Jean-Philippe Daguerre, Farewell, Mr. Haffmann is a twisting, turning, and satisfying tale that reveals the complex and contradictory sides of humanity pushed to its darkest limits.

Thursday, January 12, 2:30pm

Monday, January 16, 8:30pm

 

Haute Couture

Sylvie Ohayon

France, 2021, 101 min.

French with English subtitles

A warm, witty, and wildly stylish testament to women working together, this Paris-set drama stars the captivating and elegant French standout Nathalie Baye as Esther, a seamstress for Dior on Avenue Montaigne. Now on the verge of retirement, the cutting and acerbic Esther has given her life to her job, which has created conflict in her personal relations, including with her estranged daughter. After an unexpected and seemingly random course of events brings her face to face with Jade (Lyna Khoudri), a young woman from the Parisian banlieues, Esther makes the surprising decision to pass down her skills to Jade, taking her on as an intern and giving her life a new meaning and aspect. French writer-director Sylvie Ohayon’s second feature is an absorbing and tactile experience whose delight is equally attributable to its caustic, smart script and its precise focus on the hard work that goes into creating high fashion.

Thursday, January 19, 1pm

Saturday, January 21, 9:45pm 

 

I Am Not

Tomer Heymann

Israel/Guatemala, 2022, 96 min.

Hebrew, English, and Spanish with English subtitles

N.Y. Premiere

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Tomer Heymann’s latest film is a deeply emotional work that follows an outcast teenager’s life-changing journey. Oren was adopted from Guatemala by an Israeli family when he was a baby. Long unable to find his place in society, the teenager has been subject to ridicule and racism for years, while at the same time dealing with recurring false diagnoses of mental illness. Oren decides to take up a small video camera and document his own life. He embarks on a quest back to the country of his birth to seek out his biological family in the hopes of better defining his own identity.

Thursday, January 12, 5:30pm

 

I Like It Here

Ralph Arlyck

USA, 2022, 88 min.

English

N.Y. Premiere

An American documentarian for more than 50 years, Ralph Arlyck, at age 82, has created one of his most personal films. A clear-eyed meditation on the reality and surprising beauties of aging, I Like It Here finds the filmmaker reflecting on his life with discursive wit and composure while spending time with friends and lovers, neighbors and colleagues, children and grandchildren. As Arlyck reckons with the physical and emotional obstacles of growing old, he also considers the tranquility and pleasure that can come with moving into one’s final years. Threaded through with wistfulness rather than sadness or regret, situating the filmmaker within the natural beauty of his upstate New York farm, this is an eloquent cinematic statement about finding inner peace and accepting life in all its joys and challenges.

Sunday, January 15, 3pm

 

Jews of the Wild West

Amanda Kinsey

USA, 2022, 83 min.

English

N.Y.C. Premiere

Widening the historical lens, this documentary focuses on an under-explored aspect of Jewish history: the role that Jews played in Western American expansion, both in real life and in the movies. Through a tapestry of archival footage, photographs, and interviews, Amanda Kinsey’s pioneering film entertainingly excavates the past through the stories of an array of people, from known names like Max Aronson (the real “Bronco Billy Anderson” of early Hollywood) and Levi Strauss, to some you may not have heard about, like the Prussian immigrant who became a tribal leader in New Mexico and the Sephardic painter and photographer who documented the Kansas, Colorado, and Utah territories in the 1800s. Kinsey also surveys the experiences of those persecuted European Jews who picked up stakes and left the American Northeast, forging westward for better opportunities. Through the narratives of such trailblazers, and interviews with contemporary Jewish Westerners, the film tells a tale of American resilience and determination too often left out of the official history books.

Sunday, January 15, 5:30pm

 

June Zero

Jake Paltrow

USA/Israel, 2022, 105 min.

Hebrew and English with English subtitles

U.S. Premiere

The 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, architect of the mass murder of the Jews during World War II, is revisited in a gripping and surprising new vision from American filmmaker Jake Paltrow (The Good Night). This Hebrew-language drama—based on true accounts—tells its story from the intertwined perspectives of three largely unrelated figures: Eichmann’s Jewish Moroccan prison guard; an Israeli police investigator for the prosecution and a Holocaust survivor; and a 13-year-old Jewish Libyan immigrant. Largely shot on 16mm film, Paltrow’s vividly textured work uses these disparate points of view to paint an image of the diasporic Jewish people and, in its unorthodox narrative approach, reminds us that the same histories are experienced differently by people all over the world, and we are connected through shared traumatic pasts.

Sunday, January 15, 8pm

 

Krzysztof Wodiczko: The Art of Un-War

Maria Niro

USA, 2022, 61 min.

English, French, Italian, and Japanese with English subtitles

N.Y. Premiere

Polish artist Krzysztof Wodiczko has devoted his career to work that calls attention to the inhumanity of war, imploring us to dismantle and change our perceptions of human conflict so we can drive toward peace—a concept he calls “Un-War.” Now 79 years old, Wodiczko is the subject of a compelling documentary by Maria Niro. The film pays tribute to his artistry and political commitment, demonstrating how his large-scale works, which include slide and video projections onto the sides and facades of major architectural sites and monuments, serve to disrupt the complacency of a public increasingly inured to violence. Delving into Wodiczko’s extensive array of stirring installations as well as his own past traumas—which include his having been born in 1943 Warsaw, two days before the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as growing up in a Communist Poland still feeling the tragic aftereffects of World War II—Niro’s film also features interviews with fellow artists and activists in its pursuit of the heart and soul of a major artist whose work will, unfortunately, never be irrelevant.

Saturday, January 14, 7pm

 

March 68

Krzysztof Lang

Poland, 2022, 115 min.

Polish with English subtitles

N.Y. Premiere

In this gripping coming-of-age story set against the volatile backdrop of late-1960s Communist Warsaw, Hania, a student at the state theater school, experiences political awakening and her own personal revolution. At first, Hania is blinded by love, falling intensely for technology student Janek, whom she meets at a play opening; gradually, however, she comes to realize that her fellow Jewish citizens—including Hania’s doctor father—are being persecuted in a series of antisemitic purges conducted in response to the hate-fueled rhetoric of Poland’s leader, Władysław Gomułka. When her family decides to emigrate for their own safety, Hania doesn’t want to join them, and instead tries to build a life with Janek. However, things spiral out of control, leading to a powerful climax set during the infamous events of March 1968. Inspired by a moment in time that shaped the social consciousness of director Krzysztof Lang, the film depicts the momentous collision of history and romance.

Monday, January 16, 2:30pm

Tuesday, January 17, 4pm

 

The Narrow Bridge

Esther Takac

Australia, 2022, 76 min.

Arabic, Hebrew, and English with English subtitles

N.Y. Premiere

The Narrow Bridge is an eye-opening work of nonfiction about trauma and healing that follows four individuals, Palestinian and Israeli, who have each suffered unimaginable grief—the loss of a loved one to violence—but who manage to use their misfortunes to find a way to healing and reconciliation. The film’s four main subjects, Bushra, Rami, Meytal, and Bassam, are part of an organization called Israeli Palestinian Bereaved Families, a union of people who aim to turn their personal devastation into social change through workshops, talks, and public memorials. As Australian filmmaker and trauma psychologist Esther Takac’s sensitively drawn documentary shows, their objectives are met with strong opposition, yet they are driven along their brave path toward some form of peace that exists beyond politics.

Monday, January 23, 12pm (virtual screening)

 

Schächten—A Retribution

Thomas Roth

Austria, 2022, 110 min.

German with English subtitles

N.Y.C. Premiere

This dynamic, lavishly mounted historical drama about the scars of war and the long road to revenge explores the lives of Austrian Jews in the years following World War II and the legacies of anti-Semitism and racism that follow them. Set in Vienna in the 1960s, Schächten follows a young Jewish businessman named Victor who bears witness to an unthinkable miscarriage of justice: the acquittal of an SS commandant who oversaw the murder of Victor’s mother, sister, and grandparents when he was a child. As a result, Victor loses faith in the ability of the legal system to mete out proper punishment and vows instead to take the law into his own hands. Thomas Roth’s film sensitively handles difficult subject matter and builds to a haunting conclusion.

Thursday, January 19, 3:45pm

Saturday, January 21, 7pm

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

SHTTL

Ady Walter

Ukraine/France, 2022, 114 min.

Yiddish and Ukrainian with English subtitles

U.S. Premiere

This ambitious and technically astonishing film tells the expansive, multi-character story of a Jewish village in Ukraine on the border with Poland 24 hours before Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union. Shot in a single take in Ukraine, the film unspools with our knowledge of imminent terror and destruction looming, while at the same time focusing on the vitality of lives about to be destroyed. Featuring a remarkable cast that includes Moshe Lobel (who appeared in Broadway’s Yiddish Fiddler on the Roof revival) and Yiddish-fluent actor Saul Rubinek, this is a ruminative, philosophical work of naturalism that insightfully depicts a place brimming with vibrancy and the romance, politics, and intrigue of everyday life.

Monday, January 16, 5:30pm

Tuesday, January 17, 1pm

 

This Is National Wake

Mirissa Neff

South Africa/USA, 2022, 66 min.

English

N.Y.C. Premiere

In her energetic and revelatory directorial debut, Mirissa Neff tells the amazing story of young musicians who dared to start a band together against the rupture and racism of South Africa’s apartheid regime. Launched in 1979, National Wake was the collaboration of a Jewish guitarist from Johannesburg, Ivan Kadey, and two Black musician brothers from Soweto, Gary and Punka Khoza, at a time when it was illegal for them to play or live together. Though the government shut them down, the bandmates filmed their rebellious, brave performances on Super 8, capturing themselves for posterity. Neff uses this archival footage, along with audio interviews, to create a grainy, visually appropriate plunge into the past, telling the immersive story of a short-lived yet remarkable countercultural attempt at using music to fight an entrenched, racist world.

Saturday, January 14, 9:15pm

 

Where Life Begins

Stéphane Freiss

Italy/France, 2022, 101 min.

Italian and French with English subtitles

N.Y.C. Premiere

Set in the bucolic Calabrian countryside, this intimate and elegantly rendered romantic drama about family, faith, and freedom is the directorial debut of veteran French actor Stéphane Freiss. An ultra-Orthodox family has arrived in the south of Italy from their home in eastern France to assist with the annual harvest of the citron fruits used during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Among them is Esther (Lou de Laâge), a rabbi’s daughter who is increasingly dissatisfied with her life, chafing at the bonds of her religious upbringing and resentful of her imminent arranged marriage. When she meets and feels a growing attraction for the farm’s owner, Elio (Riccardo Scamarcio), she dares to imagine a different, potentially happier path for herself. Where Life Begins is an intelligent and honest depiction of the pain of questioning one’s faith and community that offers no easy answers.

Tuesday, January 17, 7pm

Wednesday, January 18, 2:30pm

 

Yamna’s Blessing

Ilanit Swissa

Israel, 2021, 55 min.

Hebrew with English subtitles

U.S. Premiere

Set in Sderot, a city in the south of Israel, this loving documentary portrait follows the life, culture, and rituals of an 84-year-old named Yamna. A miracle worker and a righteous woman, Yamna is regularly approached by people asking for help. Ilanit Swissa’s film frames Yamna’s life in prismatic fashion, allowing us to get to know her through those seeking her blessings, including a seemingly infertile woman who wants to get pregnant and a grandson who dreams of success in the music industry. At the same time, Yamna hopes to pass her mystical powers down to her daughter, Shula, though Shula has yet to discover how to embody them. In her observational work of nonfiction, Swissa portrays this unique and delightful individual with a combination of joy and curiosity.

Preceded by

Susam

Sami Morhayim

Turkey, 2021, 18 min.

Turkish with English subtitles

N.Y. Premiere

In Turkish director Sami Morhayim’s provocative drama, young Susam, on the morning of his  bar mitzvah, locks himself in his bedroom and refuses to leave. His family is unable to convince him to come out and, abiding by strict Shabbat rules, cannot break the door down, leading to an intellectual debate about religious faith and manhood.

Monday, January 16, 12pm

 

SIDEBAR

A Letter to Mother

Joseph Green and Leon Trystand

Poland, 1939, 106 min.

Yiddish with English subtitles

35mm Film Restoration by the National Center for Jewish Film

A classic of Yiddish cinema, A Letter to Mother (also known as The Eternal Song) was among the final Yiddish films made in Poland before the Nazi invasion. Set in the years leading up to World War I, Joseph Green and Leon Trystand’s film follows Dobrish (Lucy German), a mother of three children trying to provide for her family in a town in Poland (now Ukraine), after her husband moves to America. Struggling against the ever-increasing challenges of poverty and war, Dobrish and her children finally strike out for New York with help from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) in the hopes of rebuilding their lives for a better future. The most financially successful Yiddish film of its era, and a hit in New York, where it opened just two weeks after Germany’s blitzkrieg over Poland, the landmark A Letter to Mother is a moving work of traditional melodrama and a metaphor for the displacements facing European Jews in 1939. 

Preceded by

Jewish Life in Lwow

Shaul Goskind and Yitzhak Goskind

Poland, 1939, 10 min.

Yiddish with English subtitles

This rare 1939 portrait of the daily lives of Jews in Lwow, Poland, now Lviv, Ukraine, home to a thriving Jewish community before World War II, is one of a handful of surviving films from Warsaw-based filmmakers Shaul Goskind and Yitzhak Goskind. Full of vibrant images of stylish women, thriving markets, parks, and promenades, this short documentary captures a prosperous world on the precipice of obliteration by the coming Nazi invasion.

Sunday, January 15, 12pm    

 

A Life Apart: Hasidism in America

Oren Rudavsky and Menachem Daum

USA, 1997, 96 min.

English, Russian, and Yiddish with English subtitles

World Premiere of 4K Restoration

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, this groundbreaking documentary was among the first American films to offer a full, distinctive, inside look at the traditional Eastern European Jewish communities that found their most vital enclaves in America after mass migrations post–World War II. Taking an analytical and highly informative approach to its subject, Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky’s film—which premiered at the New York Jewish Film Festival in January 1997—looks at the rituals, beliefs, challenges, and daily lives of Hasidic Jews in New York City. Narrated by Sarah Jessica Parker and Leonard Nimoy and featuring a score by klezmer musician and composer Yale Strom, A Life Apart presents a plurality of voices to paint a complex and lively picture of a people who had to struggle to establish their community amid ignorance and anti-Semitism.

Thursday, January 19, 7pm, followed by panel discussion 

 

SHORTS PROGRAM

 

Shorts by Women

Wednesday, January 18, 8:30pm

 

The Waltz

Yulia Ruditskaya

USA, 2022, 5 min.

Yiddish with English subtitles

Employing beautiful, autumnal animation, this short by Yulia Ruditskaya, an immigrant artist from Belarus who lives in New York, is inspired by a poem by the Ukraine-born Yiddish poet A. Lutsky and uses nonlinear narration and phantasmagoric imagery.

 

Shirey Mara

Nata Korneyeva

Belarus, 2021, 10 min.

Russian with English subtitles

N.Y. Premiere

This gorgeously animated fairy tale from Belarus tells the story of reconciling with the loss of a loved one. Using an evocative collage style, Nata Korneyeva depicts the possibility of renewal and the healing magic of music that transcends death.

 

My Parent, Neal

Hannah Saidiner

USA, 2021, 9 min.

English

Hannah Saidiner uses vivid, colorful animation to reflect on her parent, with whom she shares a birthday, coming out as transgender and how their relationship evolved. My Parent, Neal evokes its emotional landscape through the depiction of domestic spaces and meaningful intimate objects.

 

Anatevka

Danielle Durchslag

USA, 2022, 4 min.

English

U.S. Premiere

The new film from artist and filmmaker Danielle Durchslag playfully interrogates the cultural prevalence of Fiddler on the Roof, showing a group of schoolchildren singing a darkly comedic, lyrically updated version of the show’s most mournful tune, “Anatevka.”

 

Castles in the Sky

Pearl Gluck

USA, 2022, 33 min.

English and Yiddish with English subtitles

World Premiere

Filmmaker and professor Pearl Gluck’s provocative latest dramatic short film centers on Malke, a Holocaust survivor and sex-ed teacher who has been leading a secret life for decades: performing slam poetry on the Lower East Side. Castles in the Sky features commanding performances from actor Lynn Cohen, who died in 2020, and poet Venus Thrash, who died in 2021.

 

Make Me a King

Sofia Olins

United Kingdom, 2021, 16 min.

English and Yiddish with English subtitles

Award-winning British filmmaker Sofia Olins directed this delightful queer narrative about a young Jewish drag king performer. Though shunned by their parents, the nonbinary Ari continues to pursue their dream, while honoring the legacy of real-life Yiddish vaudeville drag king legend Pepi Litman.

 

Schedule of Films

All screenings are at the Walter Reade Theater unless otherwise indicated.

 

Thursday, January 12

2:30pm: Farewell, Mr. Haffmann (116')

5:30pm: I Am Not (96')

8:15pm: America (127') (Opening Film)

 

Saturday, January 14

7pm: Krzysztof Wodiczko: The Art of Un-War (61')

9:15pm: This Is National Wake (66')

 

Sunday, January 15

12pm: A Letter to Mother (106') preceded by Jewish Life in Lwow (10') 

3pm:  I Like It Here (88')

5:30pm: Jews of the Wild West (83')

8pm: June Zero (105')

 

Monday, January 16 (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day)

12pm: Yamna's Blessing (55') preceded by Susam (18')

2:30pm: March '68 (115')

5:30pm: SHTTL (114')

8:30pm: Farewell, Mr. Haffmann (116')

 

Tuesday, January 17

1pm: SHTTL (114')

4pm: March '68 (115')

7pm: Where Life Begins (101')

 

Wednesday, January 18

12pm: Charlotte Salomon: Life and the Maiden (75')

2:30pm: Where Life Begins (101')

6pm: Charlotte Salomon: Life and the Maiden (75') (Centerpiece)

8:30pm: Shorts by Women (total run time: 77')

 

Thursday, January 19

1pm: Haute Couture (101')

3:45pm: Schächten—A Retribution (110')

7pm: A Life Apart: Hasidism in America (96') followed by panel discussion

 

Saturday, January 21

7pm: Schächten—A Retribution (110')

9:45pm: Haute Couture (101')

 

Sunday, January 22

12pm: Exodus 91 (90')

2:30pm: Algeria (104')

5:30pm: Exodus 91 (90')                               

8pm: Algeria (104') (Closing Film)

______________________________________________

Virtual screenings

Available Monday, January 23 at noon ET through Saturday, January 28 at noon ET, with 24-hour playback window

Monday, January 23

12pm: Barren (108')

The Narrow Bridge (76')        

About the Jewish Museum

The Jewish Museum is an art museum committed to illuminating the complexity and vibrancy of Jewish culture for a global audience. Located on New York City’s Museum Mile, in the landmarked Warburg mansion, the Jewish Museum was the first institution of its kind in the United States and is one of the oldest Jewish museums in the world. The Museum offers diverse exhibitions and programs and maintains a unique collection of nearly 30,000 works of art, ceremonial objects, and media reflecting the global Jewish experience over more than 4,000 years. The public may visit TheJewishMuseum.org or call 212.423.3200 for more information. 

About Film at Lincoln Center
Film at Lincoln Center is dedicated to supporting the art and elevating the craft of cinema and enriching film culture.

Film at Lincoln Center fulfills its mission through the programming of festivals, series, retrospectives, and new releases; the publication of Film Comment; and the presentation of podcasts, talks, special events, and artist initiatives. Since its founding in 1969, this nonprofit organization has brought the celebration of American and international film to the world-renowned Lincoln Center arts complex, making the discussion and appreciation of cinema accessible to a broad audience and ensuring that it remains an essential art form for years to come.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and 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 www.filmlinc.org and follow @filmlinc on Twitter and Instagram.

Press contacts

The Jewish Museum

Anne Scher, Senior Director of Strategic Communications, 212.423.3271 - ascher@thejm.org

Film at Lincoln Center

John Kwiatkowski, Publicity & Communications Manager, jkwiatkowski@filmlinc.org

Eva Tooley, Junior Publicist, etooley@filmlinc.org