Join us to celebrate the diversity and richness of Jewish culture and history through the medium of film.

The Phyllis Hoffman Hartford Jewish Film Festival is back for its 29th year this winter, ready to captivate audiences with a diverse array of films, speakers, and special events. The Film Festival Committee carefully selects films that showcase the breadth and depth of Jewish cultural, religious, historical, and social conditions of the modern era. These films offer audiences the opportunity to experience powerful stories and moving images that challenge and inspire.

Schedule of Events

January 11, 2025

7:00pm - Bliss at Mandell JCC

Sassi and Efi are hard workers, struggling with the debt left by Sasai's son before he left for Brussels. Though there is quite an age gap between them, their love and humor keep them from life's weariness and despair. When two youngsters - Omri, Sassi's hormonal and kind-hearted grandson, and David, Efi's former student - appear in their lives, their carefully kept routine breaks, and the couple's love is tested. Eighteen years after Aviva, My Love, Sasson Gabai and Asi Levi collaborate once again with director Shemi Zarhin to showcase their unique talents. Sassi and Efi's love story is both funny and touching. It illuminates in its unique way issues of relationships, family, and loyalty and sends a painful but also warm and optimistic look at the social realities of today.

January 12, 2025

7:00pm - Centered: Joe Lieberman at Mandell JCC

Reel Talk: Dan Papermaster in conversation with Matthew Lieberman.

Joe Lieberman nearly became the first Jewish Vice President of the United States. He was a politician who put principles above party, and the Founding Chairman of No Labels, an organization whose quest was to find a bipartisan ticket for the 2024 presidential election. In pursuit of his beliefs, Joe Lieberman sacrificed his popularity for what he believed was in the best interest of the American people. Centered chronicles Lieberman's remarkable journey and more than 40 years of public service, providing invaluable insights into this iconoclastic politician.

January 19, 2025

3:00pm - Ain't No Back to a Merry-Go-Round at Mandell JCC

Reel Talk: Avi Patt, Maurice Greenberg Professor of Holocaust Studies and Inaugural Director of the Center for the Study of Antisemitism, in conversation with Cheryl Greenberg, Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of History at Trinity College, and Deacon Arthur L. Miller, former Director of the Office of Black Catholic Ministries for the Archdiocese of Hartford.

When five Howard University students sat on a segregated Maryland carousel in 1960, the arrests made headlines. When the largely Jewish community near Glen Echo Amusement Park joined the Black students in picketing, the first organized interracial civil rights protest in US history was born. The pickets attracted Nazis, Congressmen, and a press avalanche. Picketing together for these unlikely allies led to partying together, and union organizers mentored student activists. Ten 1961 Freedom Riders, including Stokely Carmichael, were incubated on the Glen Echo picket line, and the carousel arrests were challenged in a Supreme Court case. With never-before seen footage, and immersive storytelling by Emmy-award winning director Ilana Trachtman, four living protesters rescue this untold story, revealing the price, and the power, of heeding the impulse to activism. Acclaimed actors Jeffrey Wright, Mandy Patinkin, voice the Black and mainstream presses, respectively, with additional voiceover by Bob Balaban, Lee Grant, Peter Gallagher, Dominique Thorne, Alysia Reiner and Tracie Thoms.

January 26, 2025

3:00pm - Avenue of Giants at Mandell JCC

Reel Talk: Jessica Cooperman, Doris and Simon Konover Chair in Judaic Studies and Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life at the University of Connecticut.

Starring Stephen Lang (Avatar) and Elsie Fisher (Eight Grade), Avenue of the Giants tells the true story of Herbert Heller who kept his miraculous escape from the Auschwitz Birkenau death camp a secret for 60 years, even from his family. That is, until he meets Abbey, a young teenager whose own brush with pain and death inspires him to open up, leading the two of them to exchange their stories as a meaningful and healing friendship is born.

January 28, 2025

6:30pm - Unspoken at Mandell JCC

Reel Talk: Nathan Schachter, NEJA graduate & The Jewish Agency for Israel; Ann Pava, Micah Philanthropies; Miryam Kabakov, Eshel; Rabbi Yitzchok Adler, Beth David Synagogue

When Noam Stein, a closeted, religious teenager finds a love letter from before the Holocaust - written to his grandfather by another man - he discovers that he might not be alone. With the help of his high-school crush, Noam sets out to find the mysterious author of the letter and uncover both his grandfather's identity as well as his own.

February 8, 2025

7:30pm - Bad Shabbos at Mandell JCC

When two couples, Abby and Benjamin, and David and recently-converted-to-Judaism Meg, return home for Shabbat dinner, an unexpected shadow looms over their night — an accidental death (or is it murder?) threatens to unravel the whole evening. Over the course of one night during this anything-but-typical New York City shabbos, their family get-together takes a turn for the worse…Bad Shabbos takes the one-night-in-New-York story and spins from it a cast of characters, each more hilarious and specific than the next. Kyra Sedgwick kills (not literally) as the neurotic matriarch, and unexpected performances by Method Man, Catherine Curtin, and other familiar faces forge a brilliant ensemble that hits on pure comedic gold.

February 9, 2025

1:00pm - Children of Peace at Mandell JCC

A group of dreamers decided to challenge everything they know about their nationalities and histories and founded "Neve Shalom" in 1970's Israel as a social experiment. The film follows the many children who were brought up in this unique environment. In this bold attempt to raise a new generation, their internal struggles and the outside conflict challenged their revolutionary eco-system. The children of peace are now grown men and women dealing with the harsh reality of political turmoil and war.

3:00pm - Technion 10² at Mandell JCC

In 1924, the first Technion class opened in Haifa. Today, it is hard to believe that this modest class, taking place in the far reaches of the British Empire, was the start of the Technion – one of the leading technological research institutions in the world. The story of this institution's hundred years on Mount Carmel provides a fascinating prism through which to describe the history of the State of Israel. It is hard to imagine a modern-day Israel, with its strong economy and scientific and technological achievements, without the Technion playing its part. From the pre-state period, through dramatic moments in times of war, to the birth of the startup nation and breakthroughs in global-scale research – the Technion was always there.

February 16, 2025

1:00pm - Wanted: Roni Kalderon at Mandell JCC

The boy for whom soccer was in his soul, Roni Kalderon, grew up in Tel Aviv in the late 1960s, without his parents who left for the United States. At 17, Kalderon became the star of Hapoel Tel Aviv, and was regarded as the great promise of Israeli football. Then, he was invited to go to the Netherlands and play for the coveted Ajax football club. This was only the opening whistle for the real game of his life: he would soon find himself deep in international drug trafficking, constantly escaping from the law, until he disappeared off the face of the earth. The fantastic narratives woven around his enigmatic persona, and the mystery surrounding his disappearance, lead the viewer between reality and the myth around the promising footballer who became a drug lord.

3:00pm - Monkey House at Mandell JCC

Monkey House is the latest film by revered Israeli filmmaker Avi Nesher. Amir Haddad, a very ambitious young filmmaker, stumbles upon a complex scam, concocted by Amitai Kariv – an Israeli left-wing novelist, and Margo Mai – a young woman who's writing Kariv's biography. Haddad considers this encounter fodder for a docu-thriller, one that features much passion and deceit. Kariv, not a nemesis to be taken lightly, takes exception to Haddad's investigation. Margo Mai seems to be playing both sides. Hostilities ensue. When narratives collide, truth is an immediate victim.

February 27, 2025

7:00pm - About the Levkoviches at Mandell JCC

Generous but stubborn boxing coach Tamás gets along well with everyone but his own son. They have not spoken since Iván moved to Israel and became religious in an orthodox community. When Tamás' beloved wife, Zsuzsa dies unexpectedly, Tamas agrees with his son that Iván can come and sit Shiva in Tamás' house as long as he brings his son, Ariel, with him. As past conflicts resurface, they embark on an unexpected journey of self- reflection and reconciliation. Father and son are not just obliged to face their old grievances during the one-week religious mourning, but to help Ariel deal with his own grief, and his obsession that grandma's spirit is still in the house.

March 5, 2025

Yiddishland

Mandell JCC | 1:00pm
Parkade Cinema | 7:00pm

Welcome to Yiddishland offers an upbeat, witty, and timely exploration of a global community of artists rediscovering and revitalizing the endangered Yiddish language through progressive and provocative creative works. As we journey through Yiddishland—not a homeland, but a heartland without borders—we travel across continents, from Melbourne to Berlin, New York to Haifa, meeting a diverse array of individuals who find solace, identity, and inspiration in Yiddish language and culture.

March 9, 2025

3:00pm - Nathan-ism at Wadsworth Atheneum

Reel Talk: Rachel Spiegel Gerstein, Wadsworth Art Historian and Director of Jewish Arts & Culture Research Project

At the end of World War II, Nathan Hilu, the son of Syrian Jewish immigrants to New York, received a life-changing assignment from the U.S. Army: to guard the top Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials. This experience fueled a lifetime of artistic inspiration for Nathan, a virtually unknown “outsider artist,”who spent the next 70 years obsessively creating a visual narrative from his memories. But what happens when those memories take on a life of their own?

April 8, 2025

6:30pm - The Commandant's Shadow at Mandell JCC

The Commandant's Shadow is a remarkable documentary that brings together the son and grandson of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, with survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and her daughter Maya. Jonathan Glazer's film The Zone of Interest presented a fictionalized version of daily life in a simulacrum of the Nazi's family home. This documentary from director Daniela Volker steps inside the original house, with Höss's son Hans Jürgen and grandson Kai.The filmpresents the after-effects of the dark shadow cast by Höss, who killed more than a million people, most of them Jews.

Date: January 11-April 8, 2025

Locations:
Mandell Jewish Community Center, 335 Bloomfield Avenue, West Hartford, CT 06117
Parkade Cinemas, 416 West Middle Turnpike, Manchester, CT 06040
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 600 Main Street, Hartford, CT 06103

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