The 12th annual Boulder Jewish Film Festival features 13 films from around the world and our always popular shorts program, inviting audiences to engage in a meaningful conversation about the Jewish experience. All films this year are in the Boedecker Theater or the Grace Gamm Theater. Showings do sell out; purchasing early is advisable.

The festival opens on Sunday, November 10 with two screenings of a surprise hit comedy from Sundance and Telluride, “A Real Pain,” starring Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg – who also wrote and directed – as rancorous cousins looking for their roots in Poland. The festival closes Sunday, November 17 with the most popular film currently on the festival circuit, “Seven Blessings.” Focused on a Moroccan wedding celebration, this comic family drama concludes our three-film series exploring Sephardic life and culture.

All screenings are followed by a discussion with the festival’s founding director, Kathryn Bernheimer, and special guests, so please plan accordingly.

Schedule of Events:

November 10, 2024

12:00 pm - 1:15 pm: Call Me Dancer

Israel/2023/In English and Hindi/84 minutes/Documentary

This touching and uplifting dance documentary is a story of hope, heartache, and hard work. Manish is a young and talented street dancer in Mumbai whose traditional parents are counting on their only son to support them. When he secretly attends an inner-city dance school and accidentally walks into a ballet class he meets Yehuda, a curmudgeonly 70-year-old Israeli teacher, and a hunger develops within him. Ambitious and passionate, Manish is determined to make it as a professional dancer, but the odds are stacked against him. Together, Manish and Yehuda transform each other’s lives, searching to uncover who and what they are. Yehuda seeks a purpose and a place to call home. Manish dreams of dancing on the world-stage but struggles to break free from the confines of his own economic and social circumstances. Filmed in India, U.K., Israel and the USA. Directed by Leslie Shampaine.

Location: Boedecker Theater - Walnut Street, Boulder, CO 80302

Cost: $15

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3:00 pm - 4:30 pm and 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm: A Real Pain – Festival Opener

US/2024/In English/90 minutes/Feature Film

This cheeky dark comedy from writer, director, producer and star Jesse Eisenberg was a surprise hit at the Sundance Film Festival. Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin co-star as odd-couple cousins with unresolved issues who decide to honor their beloved grandmother by taking a Holocaust tour of Poland. What could possibly go wrong? Filmed in Poland, this sassy, smart and probing film grapples with Jewish family trauma in all its contemporary splendor.

“Understated, funny, and gradually heart-swelling, writer-director Jesse Eisenberg’s Chopin-kissed sophomore feature is as graceful as movies come, with the still-newbie filmmaker growing into his undeniable artistic voice behind the camera.” – Harpers Bazaar

Location: Boedecker Theater - Walnut Street, Boulder, CO 80302

Cost: $15

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November 11, 2024

3:00 pm - 4:00 pm: Telling Nonie – Veterans Day Program

Israel/2024/In Hebrew and English/50 minutes/Documentary

Tormented by his role in a 1950s Gaza assassination, Geizi Tsafrir, an elderly Israeli agent, seeks redemption. Reflecting on his time with Shin Bet (Israeli Secret Service) and his role in the killing of an Egyptian lieutenant colonel, he decides to confront his past. He contacts the colonel’s daughter, Nonie Darwish, once intent on avenging her father’s death but now a prominent voice against radical Islam and a supporter of Israel. The mysterious email from Tsafrir sets Darwish on an emotional journey into her past, culminating in a meeting with him in Los Angeles. This winner of the Haifa International Film Festival’s Best Israeli Documentary explores intricate emotions, history’s complexities, and the bumpy path toward mutual understanding and forgiveness. Directed by Paz Schwartz.

Our Veterans Day program also includes “Footsteps of My Father” (26 min) a tribute to Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, a devout Christian from Tennessee who risked his own life to save the lives of 200 Jewish G.I.s when they were prisoners of the Germans in WWII.

Location: Grace Gamm Theatre - Walnut Street, Boulder, CO 80302

Cost: $15

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6:30 pm - 8:30 pm: Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara

Italy/2023/Italian and Hebrew with English subtitles/134 minutes/Feature Film

Sumptuously directed by Marco Bellocchio, a legendary and beloved Italian director now in his 80s, this is a grand, historical fresco dramatizing a scandalous true story. In 1858, in the Jewish quarter of Bologna, the Pope’s soldiers burst into the home of the Mortara family to take Edgardo (Enea Sala), their seven-year-old son, who the church says was secretly baptized as a baby. Awash in painterly chiaroscuro evoking the masterworks of Caravaggio and Delacroix, Kidnapped is at once a personal, human-scale narrative of a family in crisis and a portrait of a country on the cusp of revolution. An absolute masterpiece.

Location: Grace Gamm Theatre - Walnut Street, Boulder, CO 80302

Cost: $15

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November 12, 2024

3:00 pm - 5:00 pm: Stella: A Life

Germany/2023/In German with English subtitles/121 min/Feature Film

A stunning portrait of degradation and desperation, this accomplished drama depicts a chilling and disturbing reality of the Holocaust rarely examined on screen. Vivacious Stella Goldschlag dreams of a career as a jazz singer but as a Jew in Berlin during the Nazi regime she is forced to go into hiding before her life takes a tragic turn. In order to save herself and her parents from deportation to Auschwitz, Stella begins to systematically betray other Jews by turning them over to authorities. Based on a true story and featuring a terrific performance by award-winning actress Paula Beer, this morally complex drama examines the sometimes fine line between victims of evil and participants in the same horror. Directed by Kilian Riedhof.

Location: Boedecker Theater - Walnut Street, Boulder, CO 80302

Cost: $15

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6:30 pm - 7:15 pm: Isreal Swings For The Gold – Ryan Lavarnway in person

US/2023/English/77 min/Documentary

In 2021, Israel’s baseball team competed in the Olympics for the first time. With no media allowed in Tokyo’s Olympic Village, the players record their own experiences, logging unexpected battles against anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. At once disturbing and inspiring, this story of Jewish pride makes an engaging follow-up to the crowd-pleasing 2018 hit “Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel,” about Israel’s Cinderella run at the 2017 World Baseball Classic. Sadly, this underdog documentary could not be more relevant today. Directed by Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller, and Jeremy Newberger

Ryan Lavarnway, the major league catcher who played on both Israeli teams, appears in person with the screening.

Location: Grace Gamm Theatre - Walnut Street, Boulder, CO 80302

Cost: $15

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November 13, 2024

3:00 pm - 4:30 pm: Auction

France/2024/In French with English subtitles/91 Minutes/Feature Film

An ambitious Parisian auctioneer receives a letter from a lawyer claiming that a common worker in the suburbs owns a painting by Egon Schiele. Although he believes it can only be a fake, he discovers that the painting is a masterpiece gone missing in 1939. While this sale could make his career, he soon realizes that he has in his hands a work of art looted from its Jewish owners by the Nazis. This morally complex French drama depicts a single tragedy in the largest art and property theft in human history; dozens of Egon Schiele’s paintings were looted from Jewish owners and only a handful finally returned to their rightful owner’s heirs.  Directed by Pascal Bonitzer.

Location: Boedecker Theater - Walnut Street, Boulder, CO 80302

Cost: $15

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6:30 pm - 8:00 pm: Running On Sand – Community Centerpiece

Israel/2024/In Hebrew with English subtitles/104 minutes/Feature Film

In this feel-good fable, a young Eritrean refugee deported from Israel is mistaken for the new foreign player of a struggling football team, and his survival depends on the team’s success. Nominated for the Israeli Academy Award for Best Film and a popular sensation in Israel, this heartfelt and humorous tale of mistaken identity sheds light on the challenges faced by refugees – and stars the charismatic Congo-born actor Chancela Mongoza and a group of other African migrant actors. Directed by Adar Shafran.

Location: Grace Gamm Theatre - Walnut Street, Boulder, CO 80302

Cost: $15

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November 14, 2024

3:00 pm - 5:00 pm: Shorts: Peacocks, Pops & Pepchook

Featuring narrative, documentary, and animated films from Israel, the UK, and the USA, this year’s program of 7 shorts curated by Judith Dack and the Shorts Committee will surely leave you smiling.

The Peacock That Passed Over 4 min  British Documentary. Directed by Max Goldberg. An unlikely whimsical creature takes up long-term residence at a Leeds synagogue where the film explores the responses of a diverse section of the Yorkshire community who are all in delighted agreement over this charming state of affairs.

Pops 19 min British Narrative. Directed by Lewis Rose. A comedic drama about a battle that breaks out between two siblings over their late Jewish father’s eccentric last request. Will it be Elli or Roz who will determine Pop’s final journey?

No Flowers 10 min Israel. In Hebrew w/subtitles. From the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem. The florist’s delivery woman has to call forth previously unused counseling skills when she becomes embroiled in a couple’s dispute where the recipient refuses the flowers her lover has sent just before Shabbat.

Pepchook 9 min Israeli Animation in English. By student filmmaker Tamar Chetzroni from the School of Audio & Visual Arts at Sapir College in Sderot, Israel, located less than two miles from the Gaza border. Sometimes intercultural romances are wonderful in one setting but don’t translate well outside of that context. See what happens when an Israeli woman visits her post-cruise ship boyfriend in his home country of Samoa, where they never even heard of the Holoc.

Heritage Day 19 min English. Written and Directed by award-winning Lara Everly, starring Rachel Bloom. In this dark comedy, eight-year-old Evie becomes obsessed with playing Holocaust after dressing up as her estranged grandmother, a holocaust survivor, for Heritage Day at school. Inspired by a true event, this film explores the comedic irony that Evie is re-creating a world where everyone else is trying to forget. Evie is at the age where her truth drives her actions more than social norms do. Her behavior makes her mother Sarah, question herself as a parent and ultimately sympathize more with her mom. The holocaust is a complex and tender topic that this film tackles through the lens of subsequent generations and heartfelt humor.

The Anne Frank Gift Shop 15 min English. Written and directed by Mickey Rapkin. Shortlisted for the 2024 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short.

When a high-end design firm presents its plans to reimagine the gift shop at The Anne Frank House, the company’s overt appeal to Generation Z sparks a debate about inter-generational trauma, the Holocaust, and tote bags.

MERV 21 min English. Directed by Sam Roebling, starring Renee Taylor, Willie Orbison, and Hal Linden. Following his latest romantic humiliation, Simon is unexpectedly summoned to his grandmother’s house to meet her new boyfriend, Merv. What happens next was previously unimaginable and quite hilarious.

Buy Tickets

6:30 pm - 7:45 pm: Call Me Dancer

Israel/2023/In English and Hindi/84 minutes/Documentary

This touching and uplifting dance documentary is a story of hope, heartache, and hard work. Manish is a young and talented street dancer in Mumbai whose traditional parents are counting on their only son to support them. When he secretly attends an inner-city dance school and accidentally walks into a ballet class he meets Yehuda, a curmudgeonly 70-year-old Israeli teacher, and a hunger develops within him. Ambitious and passionate, Manish is determined to make it as a professional dancer, but the odds are stacked against him. Together, Manish and Yehuda transform each other’s lives, searching to uncover who and what they are. Yehuda seeks a purpose and a place to call home. Manish dreams of dancing on the world-stage but struggles to break free from the confines of his own economic and social circumstances. Filmed in India, U.K., Israel and the USA. Directed by Leslie Shampaine.

Location: Boedecker Theater - Walnut Street, Boulder, CO 80302

Cost: $15

Buy Tickets

November 15, 2024

12:00 pm - 1:30 pm: Here Lived

United States/2024/English/79 minutes/Documentary

This moving documentary tells two intertwined stories of hidden children, murdered parents, and the stones that bring healing. The first, set in the present and dealing with Holocaust remembrance, focuses on the “Stolpersteine” (stumbling stones) project originated by German artist Gunter Demnig, born in 1947, who creates commemorative brass-plated plaques that are placed in the pavement in front of the houses previously occupied by Jews throughout Europe. The concurrent story details Holland’s heartbreaking fate during the Shoah, when this Western European country saw 80% of the Jewish population annihilated. Both stories are told with compassion and care, expressing the idea Elie Wiesel articulated so well about the Holocaust: “How can we talk about it? How can we not talk about it?” Directed by Jane Wells

Location: Boedecker Theater - Walnut Street, Boulder, CO 80302

Cost: $15

Buy Tickets

3:00 pm - 5:00 pm: Shorts: Peacocks, Pops & Pepchook

Featuring narrative, documentary, and animated films from Israel, the UK, and the USA, this year’s program of 7 shorts curated by Judith Dack and the Shorts Committee will surely leave you smiling.

The Peacock That Passed Over 4 min  British Documentary. Directed by Max Goldberg. An unlikely whimsical creature takes up long-term residence at a Leeds synagogue where the film explores the responses of a diverse section of the Yorkshire community who are all in delighted agreement over this charming state of affairs.

Pops 19 min British Narrative. Directed by Lewis Rose. A comedic drama about a battle that breaks out between two siblings over their late Jewish father’s eccentric last request. Will it be Elli or Roz who will determine Pop’s final journey?

No Flowers 10 min Israel. In Hebrew w/subtitles. From the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem. The florist’s delivery woman has to call forth previously unused counseling skills when she becomes embroiled in a couple’s dispute where the recipient refuses the flowers her lover has sent just before Shabbat.

Pepchook 9 min Israeli Animation in English. By student filmmaker Tamar Chetzroni from the School of Audio & Visual Arts at Sapir College in Sderot, Israel, located less than two miles from the Gaza border. Sometimes intercultural romances are wonderful in one setting but don’t translate well outside of that context. See what happens when an Israeli woman visits her post-cruise ship boyfriend in his home country of Samoa, where they never even heard of the Holoc.

Heritage Day 19 min English. Written and Directed by award-winning Lara Everly, starring Rachel Bloom. In this dark comedy, eight-year-old Evie becomes obsessed with playing Holocaust after dressing up as her estranged grandmother, a holocaust survivor, for Heritage Day at school. Inspired by a true event, this film explores the comedic irony that Evie is re-creating a world where everyone else is trying to forget. Evie is at the age where her truth drives her actions more than social norms do. Her behavior makes her mother Sarah, question herself as a parent and ultimately sympathize more with her mom. The holocaust is a complex and tender topic that this film tackles through the lens of subsequent generations and heartfelt humor.

The Anne Frank Gift Shop 15 min English. Written and directed by Mickey Rapkin. Shortlisted for the 2024 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short.

When a high-end design firm presents its plans to reimagine the gift shop at The Anne Frank House, the company’s overt appeal to Generation Z sparks a debate about inter-generational trauma, the Holocaust, and tote bags.

MERV 21 min English. Directed by Sam Roebling, starring Renee Taylor, Willie Orbison, and Hal Linden. Following his latest romantic humiliation, Simon is unexpectedly summoned to his grandmother’s house to meet her new boyfriend, Merv. What happens next was previously unimaginable and quite hilarious.

Buy Tickets

November 16, 2024

6:30 pm - 8:00 pm: The Catskills

US/2023/In English/86 min/Documentary

The rise and fall of the Borscht Belt is captured in all its glory in this delightful documentary by Lex Gillespie, whose previous high-spirited bit of Jewish nostalgia, “The Mamboniks,” closed the 2019 festival. With a trove of lost-and-found archival footage and a cast of characters endowed with the gift of gab, “The Catskills” journeys into the storied mountain getaway north of New York City that served as refuge for Jewish immigrants fleeing poverty as well as a lavish playground for affluent Jewish families. Stand-up comedians share their best shtick while former waiters, entertainers, and dance instructors recount tales of the family-run resorts and bungalows that inspired films like “Dirty Dancing.”

Location: Grace Gamm Theatre - Walnut Street, Boulder, CO 80302

Cost: $15

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November 17, 2024

12:00 pm - 1:30 pm: Song of Ascent

USA/2024/English/86 minutes/Documentary

In the wake of the October 7th massacre in Israel, acclaimed singer-songwriter Matisyahu finds himself at the center of a cultural storm. This powerful documentary/concert film follows Matisyahu’s journey as he performs three sold-out shows in Israel while facing cancellations and protests at his US tour dates due to rising anti-Israel sentiment. Thrust into a role he never sought, Matisyahu becomes a significant voice for Jewish people worldwide, navigating the complexities of identity, faith, and resilience amidst a global crisis. Director: Shlomo Weprin

Location: Grace Gamm Theatre - Walnut Street, Boulder, CO 80302

Cost: $15

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3:00 pm - 5:00 pm: The Blond Boy From The Casbah

France/2023/In Arabic and French with English subtitles/126 minutes/Feature Film

A film within a film, this loving portrait of the once-thriving Sephardic community in Algiers in the 1960s finds a famed French filmmaker returning home with his teenage son to present his beautifully reenacted memoir. 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. In the present, the adult Antione wanders through the city, immersed in the moments of happiness, laughter, and tears of his youth – spent between school, friends, and his Jewish family. Written and directed by Alexandre Arcady.

Your ticket includes our Sephardic reception in the MacMillan Family Lobby at 5:30 pm.

Location: Grace Gamm Theatre - Walnut Street, Boulder, CO 80302

Cost: $15

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6:30 pm - 8:30 pm: Seven Blessings – Closing Night

Israel/2023/Hebrew, French, Moroccan with English subtitles/108 minutes/Feature Film

Winner of ten Israeli Academy Awards including Best Picture, Director, Script, and Actress, Seven Blessings was Israel’s submission to the Oscars for Best International Film. In early 1990s Jerusalem, a boisterous Moroccan-Jewish-Israeli clan gathers for the wedding of a Moroccan-Jewish bride and French-Ashkenazi groom over the course of seven nights (sheva brachot), occasioning joy, laughter and oh so much delicious food. But behind the joie de vivre, family secrets lurk. Directed with deep affection, Seven Blessings celebrates mothers, daughters, sisters and aunts, depicting their lives with uncommon honesty and humor. Written by co-stars Reymonde Amsallem and Eleanor Sela and directed by Ayelet Menahemi.

Your ticket includes our Sephardic reception in the MacMillan Family Lobby at 5:30 pm.

Location: Grace Gamm Theatre - Walnut Street, Boulder, CO 80302

Cost: $15

Buy Tickets

Date: November 10-17, 2024

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