New York Jewish Film Festival 2023
The Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center are delighted to continue their partnership to bring you the 32nd annual New York Jewish Film Festival, taking place January 12 – 23, 2023, presenting 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.
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.
Selection Team
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.
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.
For those interested in additional information about NYJFF titles, please refer to the Print Source guide.
Virtual
See both films in the Virtual Cinema and save with the NYJFF Virtual Bundle.
Barren (Virtual)
U.S. Premiere | Get Virtual Tickets
In this provocative drama about faith and sexual exploitation, an ultra-Orthodox twenty-something couple in Israel, Feigi and Naftali, unable to conceive children, find their lives upended after a rabbi claims to be a healer of barren women and convinces Feigi to undergo treatment.
The Narrow Bridge (Virtual)
New York Premiere | Get Virtual Tickets
Four people, Israeli and Palestinian, who have suffered unimaginable grief—the loss of loved ones to violence—manage to use their misfortunes to find a way toward healing and reconciliation in Australian filmmaker and trauma psychologist Esther Takac’s sensitively drawn documentary.In-Person
America
Opening Film | New York Premiere | Q&A with Ofir Raul Graizer
In Ofir Raul Graizer’s enveloping story about sexual identity and personal trauma, a swimming coach living in Chicago returns to his home country, Israel, after his father dies, which triggers a series of life-altering events for him and his childhood friend.
Charlotte Salomon: Life and the Maiden
Centerpiece Film | World Premiere | Q&As with Vicky Krieps and co-directors Delphine Coulin & Muriel Coulin
This new documentary details the extraordinary life and work of artist Charlotte Salomon, who, though she was killed in Auschwitz at age 26, completed a mind-boggling amount of art before her deportation, including some 1,300 paintings.
Alegría
Closing Film | Q&As with Violeta Salama and Cecilia Suárez
A single mother who does not acknowledge her Jewish heritage returns to her Spanish hometown of Melilla on Africa’s north coast for her niece’s Orthodox wedding in filmmaker Violeta Salama’s layered, comic-tinged drama about women breaking free from patriarchal tradition.
Exodus 91
New York Premiere | Q&As with Micah Smith
Through a hybrid of documentary and dramatic narrative, this historical drama returns to the politically complex May 1991 event known as Operation Solomon, when Israel negotiated the release of 15,000 Ethiopian Jews to save them from a country plagued by famine and civil war.
Farewell, Mr. Haffmann
New York Premiere
In this acclaimed, engrossing drama set in Paris during the German occupation, beloved French actor Daniel Auteuil stars as a Jewish jeweler unable to escape the city to rejoin his family who must strike a life-altering deal with the young French couple who have taken over his shop.
Haute Couture
I Am Not
New York Premiere | Q&A with director Tomer Heymann and Deborah, Ehud, and Oren Levy (Oren will participate virtually)
Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Tomer Heymann’s latest film is a deeply emotional work that follows boarding school student Oren Levy through several milestones, including his adoption from Guatemala, his false diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome, and his trip to his birth country.
I Like It Here
New York Premiere | Q&A with Ralph Arlyck
At age 82, longtime documentarian Ralph Arlyck has created one of his most personal films, a clear-eyed meditation on the reality and surprising beauties of aging, and an eloquent cinematic statement about finding inner peace and accepting life in all its pleasures and challenges.
Jews of the Wild West
New York Premiere | Q&A with Amanda Kinsey
Widening the historical lens, this entertaining documentary by Amanda Kinsey focuses on an aspect of Jewish history long forgotten: the role that Jews played in the American West in the past, the present, and in the movies.
June Zero
U.S. Premiere | Q&A with Jake Paltrow and Oren Moverman
The 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, architect of the mass murder of the Jews during World War II, is revisited from three disparate perspectives in this gripping and surprising new drama from American filmmaker Jake Paltrow.
Krzysztof Wodiczko: The Art of Un-War
New York Premiere | Q&A with Maria Niro, Krzysztof Wodiczko & more
Maria Niro’s compelling documentary 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.
March ’68
New York Premiere | Q&As with Krzysztof Lang
A young theater student experiences political awakening and her own personal revolution in this gripping coming-of-age story about the collision of history and romance set against the volatile backdrop of late-1960s Communist Warsaw and the rise of antisemitism.
Schächten—A Retribution
New York Premiere | Q&As with Thomas Roth and Jeff Wilbusch
This historical drama set in Vienna in the 1960s follows a young Jewish businessman named Victor who takes the law into his own hands after an SS commandant who oversaw the murder of his mother, sister, and grandparents when he was a child is acquitted.
SHTTL
U.S. Premiere | Q&As with Ady Walter, Jean-Charles Lévy, Moshe Lobel & Saul Rubinek
This evocative 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.
This Is National Wake
New York Premiere | Q&A with Mirissa Neff
In 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 against the rupture and racism of South Africa’s apartheid regime.
Where Life Begins
New York Premiere
Set in the bucolic Calabrian countryside during the citron harvest, this intimate and elegantly rendered romantic drama about family, faith, and freedom follows the blossoming attraction between the farm owner and a rabbi’s daughter who is questioning the constraints of her religious upbringing.
Yamna’s Blessing
U.S. Premiere | Q&A with Ilanit Swissa
Set in the Israeli city of Sderot, this loving, observational work of nonfiction follows the life, culture, and rituals of an 84-year-old named Yamna, a miracle worker and a righteous woman who is regularly approached by people asking for help or blessings. Preceded by Sami Morhayim's Susam.
A Letter to Mother
35mm Film Restoration | Q&A with Lisa Rivo and Sharon Rivo
Set in the years leading up to World War I, A Letter to Mother is among the final Yiddish films made in Poland before the Nazi invasion. It follows a mother of three children trying to provide for her family after her husband moves to America. Preceded by Shaul Goskind and Yitzhak Goskind's Jewish Life in Lwow.
A Life Apart: Hasidism in America
World Premiere of 4K Restoration | Panel discussion with Menachem Daum, Oren Rudavsky & more
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.
Shorts by Women
Q&A with directors Danielle Durchslag, Yulia Ruditskaya, and more
Five shorts directed by women about the Jewish experience.
In-Theater
Tickets are $15; $12 for students, seniors (62+), and persons with disabilities; and $10 for Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center members.
See everything (excluding Opening Night) and save 40% with the NYJFF All-Access Pass for just $89! Sold out!
Passes are available to pick up at the box office. Your pass will grant access to one (1) for every film in the series, with exceptions listed on our website where applicable. We recommend arriving at least 15 minutes prior to a screening as late seating cannot be guaranteed. Passes do not give access to any free events or talks.
Virtual Cinema
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 [email protected].
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