2024 EVENT LIST
Selected Venue:
Director(s): Aoife Kelleher
2024
51'
France, Germany, Ireland
The previously untold story of a group of young Jewish housewives and mums, who, at the height of the Cold War, took on the might of the USSR in defense of the rights and freedoms of Soviet Jews… and won. The 35s were an international network of women with no political power or experience, who simply refused to stand idle in the face of Soviet tyranny and persecution of their co-religionists. Starting with demonstrations and protests, they progressed to a series of clandestine visits behind the Iron Curtain, worthy of a spy novel, posing as tourists in order to support and find out about the conditions of so-called ''Refusenik'' Jews. Helped by a top-secret Israeli Government agency, Nativ, these trips helped fuel political campaigns that secured the release of key dissidents, opening fissures that led to the eventual liberation of over a million Soviet Jews. For decades, the women kept their activities secret, but now, in their seventies and eighties, they are finally ready to talk.
Evans Performance Center at Shalom Austin
Nov 3
Virtual
Nov 15
Director(s): Alexandre Arcady
2023
128'
France
Passionate filmmaker Antoine travels to his birthplace, Algiers, with his young son to present his new film: an account of his childhood in Algeria during the country's civil war in the 1960s. As he wanders through the city, the filmmaker immerses us in the moments of happiness, laughter, and tears of his youth - spent between school, friends, and his Jewish family. Growing up in the final moments of Algeria's pre-independence period, the young Antoine discovers his profound fascination with cinema and starts to understand who he truly is.
Virtual
Nov 15
Director(s): Allison Norlian, Jean Li
2024
19'
USA
Confronting her disabled daughter''s terminal diagnosis, a mother fights to have her become a Bat Mitzvah in their synagogue, which refuses to break from tradition.
Virtual
Nov 15
Director(s): Barney Pell Scholes, Thomas Harnett O'Meara
2023
13'
UK
Liverpool, 1947. Two British soldiers are kidnapped and murdered in Mandate Palestine. In the aftermath of the so-called ‘Sergeants Affair’, a wave of antisemitic riots sweep across the UK. Louis Scholnick, a British-Jewish World War Two veteran, is forced to defend his family’s shop from a violent mob.
Virtual
Nov 15
Director(s): Jacob Combs
2024
15'
USA
When Adam brings his first-ever girlfriend to his beloved mentor’s annual queer, all-male Passover seder, he must come out of the closet all over again—putting his relationship with his chosen family in jeopardy.
Virtual
Nov 15
Director(s): Shahar Shamay
2024
11'
Israel
Asia (58) and her son Oz (30) are leaving ''Sheba'' Tel Hashomer Hospital after visiting Gadi (60), the family''s father, who is diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Their walk through the ''endless'' hospital hallway becomes unbearable for Asia, as Oz makes his feelings heard about moving Gadi to a hospice.
Virtual
Nov 15
Director(s): Ethan Rubenstein
2024
11'
USA
A new spin on a classic Jewish folktale, this Hanukkah-set story follows three friends who accidentally reawaken a centuries-old clay monster.
Virtual
Nov 15
Director(s): Mike O'Krent
2024
20'
USA
''Recent reports from the United States government are telling us that we have a limited amount of time to take the steps that are necessary to control climate change...our very existence is at risk. In the end, climate change will be controlled by agriculture.” Way ahead of their time, Mark Feedman and Chela Lightchild, through their work with the Peace Corps in the early 1970s, discover and put into practice a sustainable solution to climate change.
Virtual
Nov 15
Director(s): Yael Bridge
2024
13'
Cuba
There are a little over 200,000 people who live in Guantanamo, roughly 50 of whom are Jewish. In 1991, the Cuban government repealed its ban on religious practice, making it possible for people of all faiths to practice publicly. This film follows two octogenarians, Fortuna and Lidia, having their Bat-Mitzvah. They share their feelings of trepidation and awe at the looming ceremony. All of this is set within Guantanamo as we watch horses and buggies drive by and children playing soccer in the streets.