Festival

New York Jewish Film Festival 2026

January 14–28, 2026

The Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center continue their partnership for the annual New York Jewish Film Festival, spotlighting the finest documentary, narrative, and short films from around the world that explore the Jewish experience.

Opening Film
New York Premiere
Once Upon My Mother

2025|

France / Canada|

102 minutes|

French with English subtitles

The matriarch of a Moroccan Jewish family in the Parisian suburbs will do anything to give her son the best life despite his physical setbacks in this fiery 1960s-set drama.

Centerpiece
New York Premiere
All I Had Was Nothingness

2025|

France|

95 minutes|

French with English subtitles

Guillaume Ribot returns to Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 epic Shoah, telling the story of how he accomplished this crucial addition to cinematic Holocaust scholarship and revealing never-before-seen footage.

Fantasy Life

Matthew Shear

Closing Film
NYC Premiere
Fantasy Life

2025|

U.S.|

91 minutes

Matthew Shear’s comic drama stars Amanda Peet as a wealthy but depressed mom who bonds over shared neuroses with a newly unemployed man who’s babysitting three girls. Preceded by Jack Feldstein’s Animated New Yorkers: Joel.

Along the River

Gerburg Rohde-Dahl

New York Premiere
Along the River

2025|

Germany|

62 minutes

Gerburg Rohde-Dahl’s powerful and momentous documentary follows a group of Israelis and Palestinians who came together in Germany for a seminar in the aftermath of October 7, 2023 to speak and listen.

Charles Grodin: Rebel with a Cause

2024|

U.S.|

93 minutes

This eye-opening documentary sheds light on the life of Charles Grodin, a beloved comedy mainstay for generations of viewers as well as a social activist devoted to fighting for wrongly imprisoned people.

The First Lady

Udi Nir, Sagi Bornstein

New York Premiere
The First Lady

2025|

Germany / Israel|

82 minutes|

English, French, German, and Hebrew with English subtitles

This urgent and daring documentary profile follows Efrat Tilma, a transgender woman who fled Israel in the 1960s only to return decades later and become a pioneering activist for LGBTQ+ rights.

Frontier

Judith Colell

U.S. Premiere
Frontier

2025|

Spain / Belgium|

101 minutes|

Spanish with English subtitles

This remarkable historical thriller tells the gripping true story of the residents of a Spanish village who defied their country’s fascist regime to save Jews smuggled in from Nazi-occupied France.

Labors of Love: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Szold

2025|

U.S.|

79 minutes|

English and Hebrew with English subtitles

Peabody Award–winning director Abby Ginzberg’s heartfelt documentary spotlights Henrietta Szold, one of the 20th century’s most influential American Jewish women, who reshaped history through compassion and humanity.

The Last Spy

Katharina Otto-Bernstein

U.S. Premiere
The Last Spy

2025|

U.S. / Germany|

106 minutes|

English and German with English subtitles

Katharina Otto-Bernstein’s gripping documentary centers on CIA spy master Peter Sichel—the “Jewish James Bond”—who sat down for a wide-ranging interview about his singular life before he died in 2025 at age 102.

New York Premiere
A Letter to David

2025|

Israel / U.S.|

74 minutes|

Hebrew with English subtitles

Filmmaker Tom Shoval’s deeply moving documentary essay pays tribute to his friend David Cunio, who was taken hostage on October 7, 2023 while also examining the connection between cinema and memory.

Maintenance Artist

Toby Perl Freilich

Maintenance Artist

2025|

U.S.|

95 minutes

This delightful documentary spotlights groundbreaking public artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, the New York City Sanitation Department’s official artist-in-residence since 1977.

Mazel Tov

Adrián Suar

NYC Premiere
Mazel Tov

2025|

Argentina|

97 minutes|

Spanish with English subtitles

A son learns his estranged father has died just as he’s about to travel from the U.S. back to Argentina for his sister’s wedding in Adrián Suar’s alternately touching and raucous story of familial dysfunction.

NYC Premiere
My Underground Mother

2025|

U.S.|

86 minutes|

Czech, English, German, Hebrew, Polish, and Yiddish with English subtitles

In this absorbing and intimate debut documentary, New York journalist Marisa Fox delves into her mother’s secret past, discovering revelations about her life as a spy and freedom fighter against the Nazis.

Neshoma

Sandra Beerends

U.S. Premiere
Neshoma

2024|

Netherlands|

88 minutes|

Dutch and English with English subtitles

With a rich trove of archival footage, Sandra Beerends’s Neshoma resurrects the vibrant Jewish communities of Amsterdam in the years before World War II changed them forever through the fictional story of a Jewish teenage girl.

Orna and Ella

Tomer Heymann

U.S. Premiere
Orna and Ella

2025|

Israel|

54 minutes|

Hebrew with English subtitles

Award-winning documentarian Tomer Heymann’s mouthwatering film is a testament to the two women behind landmark Tel Aviv restaurant Orna and Ella. Preceded by Emily Lobsenz’s A Bit of Everything and Matzoh Balls Too.

NYC Premiere
Out of Exile: The Photography of Fred Stein

2021|

U.S.|

86 minutes

This visually marvelous documentary, which features the voices of Barbara Sukowa and Mark Waschke, portrays the courageous life and work of German Jewish photographer Fred Stein.

Real Estate

Anat Maltz

NYC Premiere
Real Estate

2024|

Israel / France|

99 minutes|

Hebrew with English subtitles

A young couple is priced out of their Tel Aviv apartment and on the hunt for an affordable new home, just as they are planning to start a family, in Anat Malz’s film about belonging, economic instability, and unsettled romance.

The Safe House

Lionel Baier

New York Premiere
The Safe House

2025|

Switzerland / Luxembourg / France|

90 minutes|

French with English subtitles

A 9-year-old stays in his grandparents’ apartment in Paris while the student protests of May ’68 explode in Lionel Baier’s lighthearted but multilayered portrait of an eccentric Jewish family.

Sapiro v. Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford

2025|

U.S. / Canada|

69 minutes

The notoriously antisemitic automobile tycoon Henry Ford met his match when a Jewish lawyer named Aaron Sapiro brought a libel suit against him. Gaylen Ross’s enlightening documentary tells the ultimate American David and Goliath story.

I Have Sinned

Aleksander Marten

U.S. Premiere of Restoration
I Have Sinned

1936|

Poland|

95 minutes|

Yiddish with English subtitles

During World War I, a rabbi’s daughter becomes pregnant by a German Jewish officer, abandons her baby, and flees to the U.S. This long-unseen, genre-defying gem of the 1930s was the first Yiddish sound film made in Poland.

Our Children

Natan Gross, Shaul Goskind

35mm
Our Children

1948|

Poland|

68 minutes|

Yiddish with English subtitles

This fascinating, rarely seen classic from post-WWII Poland set in an orphanage and school near Łódź mixes fiction and documentary to address possibilities of processing trauma through artistic expression.

NYJFF 2026 Shorts Program

Laetitia Clareton, Tomi Joelah Drucker, Jonas Lajboschitz, Peter Decherney, Yael Bridge, Shari Albert

NYJFF 2026 Shorts Program

2024–2025|

U.S., Canada, Denmark, Israel, Uganda|

74 minutes

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.

General Public
$19
Students, Seniors (62+), and Persons with Disabilities
$16
FLC and Jewish Museum Members
$14

 

About the Series

The 35th edition of the annual New York Jewish Film Festival spotlights 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, 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.

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.

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.

For those interested in additional information about NYJFF titles, please refer to the Print Source guide.

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