21st Annual Houston Jewish Film Festival
New promising, entertaining and exceptional award-winning films are featured this year,  bringing Jewish lives and stories to the big screen. With venues across town, the Festival, now in its 21st year, shines the spotlight on Jewish and Israeli culture, art and history and features filmmakers and guest speakers/programming.

Schedule:

Thursday, March 20, 2025

7:00 PM Moroccan Fish

$65 Member | $91 Public

Kick off the film festival with a flavorful culinary adventure inspired by the movie Seven Blessings! Join Chef Emily as she guides you in preparing traditional Moroccan fish, blending vibrant spices and cultural heritage, in this hands-on cooking class.

Saturday, March 22, 2025

8:30 p.m: Houston Jewish Film Festival: Opening Night: Seven Blessings
Drama - Directed by Ayelet Menahemi - 2023 - Israel - Hebrew, French, Moroccan with English subtitles - 111 minutes - Kaplan Theatre  
Winner of 10 Ophir Awards (Israeli Oscars), including Best Picture, Ayelet Menahemi’s captivating drama about culture and forgiveness brings us inside an extended family celebrating the union of a Moroccan-Jewish bride and French-Ashkenazi groom with the traditional Sheva Brachot (Seven Blessings). As the week of festivities unfolds—behind the boisterous, multi-lingual conversations and elaborate, home-cooked meals—lies a painful family secret inspired by true events.

Shabbos Goy
Short - Directed by Adam Goott and Alex Szlezinger - 2022 - United Kingdom - English - 5 minutes - Kaplan Theatre (preceding Seven Blessings)
Self-proclaimed “complete atheist” Terry Neville is caretaker at the Radlett United Synagogue north of London in this poignant, charmingly wry short.

Sunday, March 23, 2025

2:00 PM - Family Film - An American Tail - Evelyn Rubenstein JCC Joe Frank Theatre

Animation | Directed by Don Bluth | 1986 | USA | English | 80 minutes | At the J

Join us for the film, snacks, and crafts connected to the film
Steven Spielberg's Academy Award-nominated 1986 animated feature tells the story of Fievel Mousekewitz, a mischievous Russian Jewish mouse who sails with his family to America in 1885 to escape antisemitism. With a beautiful score and star-studded vocal cast, this family-friendly adventure highlights the challenges of the immigrant experience.

Tickets per person: $6 Member | $9 Public

3 p.m-5 p.m - The Blond Boy from the Casbah - Nancy and Rich Kinder Building

The feature film The Blond Boy from the Casbah tells the story of Antoine Lisner, a filmmaker who grew up in war-torn 1960s Algiers.
Revisiting the place as an adult, he remembers emotional moments of his youth, spent between school, friends, and his Jewish family. Coming of age during Algeria’s pre-independence period, the young Antoine discovered a profound fascination with cinema.

Tickets:
$10 festival admission; $8 MFAH members, students with ID, seniors (65+)

7:00 PM - Of Dogs and Men - Evelyn Rubenstein JCC Kaplan Theatre

Drama | Directed by Dani Rosenberg | 2024 | Israel | Hebrew with English subtitles | 82 minutes | Kaplan Theatre

October 7 survivor Hila Berdichevsky in attendance.
Filmed at Kibbutz Nir Oz just a few weeks after the October 7 attack, Dani Rosenberg's experimental dramatic account follows Israeli teenager Dar as she returns alone to her once-bucolic community to look for her lost dog. We follow Dar through a landscape marked by grief and destruction as she talks to neighbors, visits her abandoned home and searches her Telegram app for signs of her kidnapped mother.

$16 Member | $21 Public

Monday, March 24, 2025

7:30 PM - Janis Ian: Breaking Silence - Evelyn Rubenstein JCC Kaplan Theatre

Documentary | Directed by Varda Bar-Kar | 2024 | USA | English | 110 minutes | Kaplan Theatre

Janis Ian, a Grammy Award-winning Jewish singer-songwriter inspired by Joan Baez and Nina Simone, started performing in Greenwich Village at age 13. With hits such as controversial "Society's Child" (1966) and "At Seventeen" (1975), Janis Ian braved numerous personal struggles to produce a critically acclaimed body of songs dealing with serious social issues that has earned her a devoted following. This documentary shares her journey.

$16 Member | $21 Public

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

7:30 PM - Colleyville - Evelyn Rubenstein JCC Kaplan Theatre

Documentary | Directed by Dani Menkin | 2024 | USA | English | 80 minutes | Kaplan Theatre

Director Dani Menkin and Documentary subject Jeff Cohen in attendance.
Israeli-American filmmaker Dani Menkin's timely documentary walks us step-by-step through the 2022 Beth Israel Synagogue hostage crisis in Colleyville, Texas, using a gold mine of rare, recorded footage and in-depth personal interviews. Colleyville details the day's bizarre demands from the British-Pakistani gunman and how the 11-hour episode was resolved by the hostages and law enforcement.
This film contains disturbing content.

$16 Member | $21 Public

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

1:00 p.m and 7:00 p.m: Houston Jewish Film Festival: The Catskils
Documentary - Directed by Lex Gillespie - 2024 - USA - English - 86 minutes - Kaplan Theatre
Director Lex Gillespie in attendance for both screenings
Overflowing with nostalgic archival footage, this delightful documentary chronicles the rise, heyday and eventual decline of the so-called Borscht Belt—the storied mountain region north of New York City that served for decades as a getaway for Jewish families and inspired films such as Dirty Dancing. From troves of mid-century home movies to interviews with famous comedians sharing their memories, Lex Gillespie’s documentary pays homage to these many resorts and bungalow colonies and their contributions to the cultural fabric of Jewish-American life.

Thursday, March 27, 2025

7 p.m.-8:45 p.m - Vishniac - Nancy and Rich Kinder Building

Roman Vishniac was a groundbreaking 20th-century photographer best known for his iconic images of Jewish life in Eastern Europe from 1935 to 1938. Few predicted that less than a decade later, these communities would be destroyed, and Vishniac’s photographs would be the last visual records of an entire world.

Vishniac (executive produced by Nancy Spielberg) follows the artist from his early years in czarist Russia to his emergence as a Modernist photographer in Weimar Berlin, as well as his journeys across Eastern Europe before World War II and his family’s dramatic escape to America in 1940.

Tickets:
$10 festival admission; $8 MFAH members, students with ID, seniors (65+)

Friday, March 28, 2025

7:00 PM - Friday Night Lights: Maggiano's Little Italy

Experience Shabbat in a sophisticated setting featuring a three-course dinner, paired with two short films. Menus will be kosher style with fish and vegetarian options, but not under the supervision of HKA.  Adults 21 and over.

Ticket price: $65

In The Garden of Tulips

Drama | Directed by Julia Elihu | 2023 | USA | Persian with English subtitles | 14 minutes

Persian-Jewish teenager Caroline takes a final car ride with her father through the Iranian countryside before she is smuggled out of the country.

The Last Cowboy in Salford

Drama | Directed by Jake Lancaster | 2023 | UK | English | 14 minutes

Jewish teenager Jonny Richman is convinced he is a real modern-day cowboy, much to his parents frustration. A darkly comic neo-western set in Manchester, England.

Saturday, March 29, 2025

8:30 p.m: Houston Jewish Film Festival: Bliss (Hemda)
Drama - Directed by Shemi Zarhin - 2024 - Israel - Hebrew, Arabic with English subtitles - 125 minutes - Kaplan Theatre  
Patron Sponsors: Doreen and Basil Joffe
Reception following film supported by the Doreen and Basil Joffe Endowment Fund
Renowned Israeli actors Sasson Gabai and Asi Levi play Sassi and Efi, an aging married couple burdened with multiple jobs and complications from their past lives. Despite a notable age gap, Sassi and Efi demonstrate an emotional equilibrium in their relationship, using humor and empathy to support each other through life’s unpredictable physical, financial and personal stresses.

Sunday, March 30, 2025

7:00 p.m: Houston Jewish Film Festival: An Evening of Shorts
Director Julia Elihu in attendance
Girl No. 60427
Drama - Directed by Shulamit Lifshitz - 2022 - Israel - Hebrew with English subtitles - 22 minutes - Kaplan Theatre
Tel Aviv, 1998. Reut finds her grandmother’s hidden Holocaust diary, transforming her carefree summer into a profound connection with her past.

Winter of ’79
Drama - Directed by Julia Elihu - 2022 - USA - Persian with English subtitles - 20 minutes
A Persian-Jewish mother questions her faith in her country. Based on Julia Elihu’s family’s experiences escaping Iran during the 1979 Revolution.

Sevap/Mitzvah
Drama - Directed by Sabina Vajra?a - 2023 - Bosnia, Herzegovina - English, Bosnian with English subtitles - 20 minutes
In Nazi-occupied Bosnia, a Muslim woman risks everything to save her Jewish friends. Fifty years later, during the Balkan War, the tables have turned.

In The Garden of Tulips
Drama - Directed by Julia Elihu - 2023 - USA - Persian with English subtitles - 14 minutes
Persian-Jewish teenager Caroline takes a final car ride with her father through the Iranian countryside before she is smuggled out of the country.

Monday, March 31, 2025

10:00 AM - Family Film - An American Tail - Evelyn Rubenstein JCC Joe Frank Theatre

Animation | Directed by Don Bluth | 1986 | USA | English | 80 minutes | At the J

Join us for the film, snacks, and crafts connected to the film
Steven Spielberg's Academy Award-nominated 1986 animated feature tells the story of Fievel Mousekewitz, a mischievous Russian Jewish mouse who sails with his family to America in 1885 to escape antisemitism. With a beautiful score and star-studded vocal cast, this family-friendly adventure highlights the challenges of the immigrant experience.

Tickets per person: $6 Member | $9 Public

7:30 PM - CLASSIC FILM NIGHT: Crossing Delancey - Evelyn Rubenstein JCC Kaplan Theatre

Comedy, Romance | Directed by Joan Micklin Silver | 1988 | USA | English | 97 minutes | Kaplan Theatre

In this delightful, nostalgic romantic comedy, Izzy Grossman (Amy Irving) works at a bookstore on the Upper West Side, where she enjoys an intellectually fulfilling life mingling with renowned authors. Meanwhile, her grandmother Ida plots to set her up with a nice Jewish guy. Courted by two men - Anton, the worldy novelist, and Sam, a mensch of a pickle vendor from the Lower East Side - who will she pick

$16 Member | $21 Public

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

7:30 p.m: Houston Jewish Film Festival: October H8te
Documentary - Directed by Wendy Sachs - 2024 - USA - English - 100 minutes - Kaplan Theatre  
Documentary subject, Tessa Veksler in attendance
Emmy Award winner Wendy Sachs deftly explores the eruption of antisemitism on American college campuses following October 7, taking us through a timeline of anti-Israel protests fueled by propaganda spread on social media. Featuring dozens of interviews with well-known politicians, academics, activists and impressive student leaders, Sachs’ documentary illustrates how Jewish students are dealing with the scourge of antisemitic campus movements.

Wednesday April 2, 2025

7:00 PM–8:30 PM - Here Lived

Join Holocaust Museum Houston, in partnership with the Houston Jewish Film Festival, for a screening of the film Here Lived.

Artist Gunter Demnig started his Stolpersteine project in 1992. Now, more than 100,000 of these Holocaust memorial stones have been installed in sidewalks around Europe. Emmy Award-nominated filmmaker Jane Wells traces the impact of these stones and the healing they bring to individuals and communities in the Netherlands.

Thursday, April 3, 2025

7:30 PM - Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara

Drama | Directed by Marco Bellocchio | 2024 | Italy, France, Germany | Italian, Hebrew with English subtitles | 134 minutes | Kaplan Theatre

Mauro Lorenzini, Consul General of Italy in Houston in attendance.

Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio delves into his country's antisemitic past with the unsettling 1850s story of young Edgardo Mortara, who was controversially taken from his Jewish family in Bologna after a secret baptism by the family's nanny. Bellochio's somber but visually elegant style paints a vivid picture of Edgardo's fractured identity and turn towards Catholicism, his parents' desperate fight for his return and the corruption of Pope Pius IX's Church that led to monumental changes in Italian history.
Moderated discussion follows the film.

$16 Member | $21 Public

Saturday, April 5, 2025

8:30 p.m: Houston Jewish Film Festival: Closing Night: All About the Levkoviches
Drama - Directed by Ádám Breier - 2024 - Hungary - Hungarian with English subtitles - 85 minutes - Kaplan Theatre
Set in contemporary Budapest, Ádám Breier’s charming, bittersweet dramedy focuses on the gruff but lovable Hungarian boxing trainer, Tamás, who has been recently reunited with his estranged son, Iván. Under the same roof sitting shiva, the men are drawn together with the help of Tamás’ adorable grandson, Ariel, whose own grief includes encounters with his grandmother’s spirit. With mordant humor, this heartwarming family story delivers laughs and an intimate look into belief and reconciliation.

Date: March 22 - April 5, 2025

Location:

Kaplan Theatre
5601 South Braeswood
Houston, TX 77096

Click Here For More Information