Celebrate! the Season of Passover at The 2024 Jewish Film Festival
Passover is celebrated this year from the evening of Monday, April 22 - Tuesday, April 30. Prepare for the spring observance by attending The St. Louis Jewish Film Festival, which runs from April 7-18.
The festival showcases international cinema that explores universal issues through traditional Jewish values, opposing viewpoints and new perspectives.
This year, the festival will screen My Neighbor Adolf, Remembering Gene Wilder, Exodus 91, The Way to Happiness and Love Gets a Room, among other films.
Movie-goers have the opportunity to purchase an all-festival pass for just $65, giving access to eleven unique showings of Jewish feature films over the course of two weeks – a $170 value.
This All-Festival Pass will include access to Opening Night, a special event that will feature five Israeli students’ films. Attached to each film is a one-of-a-kind story about the directors, actors, and other individuals who participated in the making of the film whose lives were turned upside down after the events of October 7, 2023.
The festival is held at the B&B Theaters Creve Coeur. Witness the stories and the cinema making timely human connections to the Israeli community across the world. All-Festival Passes for the St. Louis Jewish Film festival are only $65. Tickets to Opening Night: Celebrating Israeli Filmmakers from Sapir College are $20 each. Individual tickets for each film are $15 each. Learn more at https://jccstl.com/arts-ideas/st-louis-jewish-film-festival/.
Following are trailers from each feature film in the festival.
April 9 – Comedy Double Feature, 3:30pm
My Neighbor Adolf
Synopsis
Colombia, May 1960, just a few days after the abduction of the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann by Mossad agents in Argentina. Polsky, a lonely and grumpy Holocaust survivor, lives in the remote Colombian countryside. One day, when a mysterious old German man moves in next-door, he suspects that his new neighbor is… Adolf Hitler. But, to gather evidence, he will need to be closer to his neighbor than he would like. So close that the two could almost become friends.
April 9, 7pm
Remembering Gene Wilder
Synopsis
This beloved Hollywood star of such films as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Stir Crazy, The Producers, and many more, shares narration duties about his own artistic life, his collaborations with Mel Brooks and others, and the two wives who he loved with all his heart, and who loved him just as much. His journey towards being America’s greatest film comic is as unique as his own brand and style.
Enjoy a pre- and post-show talk with Emmy Award winner and Writer/Co-Director, Glenn Kirschbaum!
April 11, 3:30pm
Overcoming Adversity Exodus 91
Synopsis
This hybrid documentary film follows Israeli diplomat, Asher Naim, on a seemingly insurmountable mission to bring 15,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. As Asher learns more about these African Jews, he finds himself between worlds and facing a crisis of faith in himself and his country. Is his government acting out of altruism towards their fellow Jews or is it using the issue as part of an elaborate publicity stunt against claims that Zionism is Racism.
April 11, 7pm
The Way To Happiness
Synopsis
Saul Birnbaum is a “hidden child”, separated from his parents at the age of 6 to escape the upcoming Shoah, sent by a Kindertransport abroad, from Vienna to Brussels. Now, in 1987, Saul is an aspiring film producer who owns a popular cinema-themed deli. While helping a young Chilean refugee to write and direct the story of his childhood, Saul unexpectedly falls in love and is forced to confront his past, and how he escaped the Holocaust.
April 14- Lover’s Sunday
3:30pm
Matchmaking
Synopsis
Moti Bernstein is the son every mother wants, a student every Rabbi loves to teach, the ideal Yeshiva study mate, the perfect match for every bride. He has it all: a good family, a brilliant mind, and he is not bad looking either. In search of a wife, he will meet the best girls in the Jewish orthodox world but will fall for the one girl he can never have. The only one he wants.
April 14- Lover’s Sunday
7pm
The Story of Annette Zelman
Synopsis
In 1942 Paris, Jewish-born Annette Zelman and Catholic Jean Jausion fall in love and wish to get married. However, Jean’s parents are opposed to the match and report Annette to the Gestapo, sending Jean into despair. This tale of love and resistance plumbs the depths of human passion, prejudice and betrayal. The film is based on actual events told in the book, Informing on Jews during the Occupation by Laurent Joly.
April 16 – Laugh and Love
3:30pm
Heritage Day
Synopsis
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 dark comedy explores the strife between mother and child, and how society reckons with its past.
April 16 – Laugh and Love
3:30pm
The Catskills
Synopsis
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.
April 16 – Laugh and Love
7pm
Love Gets A Room
Synopsis
Inspired by true events during the 1942 Nazi occupation of Poland, this is a story of a Jewish stage actress who must make the gut-wrenching decision to follow her heart or to escape the Warsaw ghetto. The film is a romantic tale of love and survival in the face of harrowing circumstances.
April 18 – Art & Romance
3:30pm
Vishniac
Synopsis
From the cosmopolitan streets of pre-war Berlin to the shtetls in Poland and Lithuania to the Princeton offices of Albert Einstein, VISHNIAC takes viewers on a journey, through the lens of one of the foremost photographers of the 20th century. Roman Vishniac is best known for having traversed Eastern Europe from 1935 through 1938, on assignment for the American Joint Distribution Committee, to photograph Jewish life in Eastern Europe. The purpose of the photographs was to raise funds for impoverished Jewish communities. Few predicted that less than a decade later, these communities would be wiped out, and that Vishniac’s photographs would provide the last visual records of an entire world.
April 18 – Art & Romance
7pm
The Shadow Of The Day
Synopsis
These are the most difficult years in which to set a love story. Set in a provincial Italian town in the late 1930’s. Luciano, like most Italians, is a Fascist sympathizer, and the owner of a restaurant. Nevertheless, he believes he can live his life according to rules he has set himself, in a sort of isolation from the outside world. But at the window overlooking the old square, along with the worrying signs of something that is about to happen in the world, a young woman appears bearing a secret. Her name is Anna, and she manages to get a job in the restaurant. From that point on, life will never be the same for Luciano; and among the dangers he faces, there is the greatest of all: love.