’23 Festival Archive
April: Yom HaShoah
Two Films in Holocaust Remembrance
A Story of Jewish Resistance During World War ll
A film by Julia Mintz
In this moving documentary, the last surviving Jewish partisans tell the little-known story of their four years in the forests of Ukraine and Poland, who organized to sabotage Nazis and their collaborators.
A film by Poli Martinez Kaplun
This film explores generations of family secrets uncovered during her search for clues about her family’s Berlin past shattered by the Holocaust. The evening Yom HaShoah observance at the Jewish Community Alliance included a candle lighting ceremony and reading by Anna Wrobel.
March: In-Person Screenings
A hybrid documentary by Pratibha Parmar
Controversial during her lifetime, visionary and activist Andrea Dworkin wrote her revolutionary analysis of male supremacy with urgency and iconoclastic flair. Decades before #MeToo, she called out the impact of sexism and rape culture on every woman’s daily life.
A film about love, loss, art, ritual by Jen Kaplan
A 30-minute documentary about raku master Steven Branfman, who used his art to work through the loss of his 23-year-old son Jared to brain cancer. In-person conversation with Steven and local clergy directly after each screening, along with an exhibit of some of the chawans (Japanese tea bowls) Steven made, one a day for one year after Jared’s death.
February: Two Streaming Films for Valentine’s Day
Newcomer Aurélie Saada’s film about a widowed French-Sephardic matriarch (Françoise Fabian of Call My Agent) whose rekindled desires meet with the disapproval of her grown children.
In Kavah Nabatian’s beautifully filmed story of diaspora, a restless Cuban ballet dancer seduces a young Persian-Jewish tourist from Montreal to engineer his escape from Havana.
January: International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Let It Be Morning is a film by Eran Kolirin, director of “The Band’s Visit,” based on Sayed Kashua’s novel. It was Israel’s official submission for the 94th Academy Awards.
The film is a wry political satire of Israeli-Palestinian tensions, explored through the Kafka-esque experience of a Palestinian businessman who, on a visit to his family’s Arab village, finds himself and the community inexplicably under lockdown by Israeli military forces.
25 in ’23
Stay tuned for news about year-round engagement over MJFF’s 25th year. Our 25 in ’23 theme speaks both to the anniversary and the number of films (give or take!) we’ll be showing across a series of mini-festivals throughout the year leading up to our anniversary celebration.
We’re in the planning stages of our birthday celebration to be held in early Fall 2023. Details to follow!
