Adam Breier’s All About the Levkoviches is part of 2024 NYJFF
THIRTY-THIRD ANNUAL NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL
Walter Reade Theater, Film at Lincoln Center
165 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Aves.
January 10-24, $14-$17
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org
thejewishmuseum.org
With the scourge that is antisemitism on the rise yet again, this time spurred by Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel and the IDF’s military response, it feels like a political statement just to attend the thirty-third annual New York Jewish Film Festival, taking place January 10–24 at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. The 2024 iteration consists of more than two dozen features, documentaries, and shorts from Hungary, Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Austria, the UK, Israel, Ukraine, and America, exploring such topics as antisemitism, family estrangement, Nazi-looted art, the 1976 trial of Pierre Goldman, Klezmer music, survival in the desert, excommunicated philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and the Shabbos goy.
The opening night selection is the New York premiere of James Hawes’s One Life, in which Sir Anthony Hopkins portrays Sir Nicholas Winton, an unassuming British stockbroker who was a quiet WWII hero; producer Joanna Laurie will participate in a postscreening discussion. The centerpiece film is the New York premiere of Michal Vinik’s Valeria Is Getting Married, about two Ukrainian sisters who come to Israel and get involved in contemporary arranged marriages. The festival closes with Ron Frank’s documentary Remembering Gene Wilder, a celebration of the beloved stage and screen star, with reminiscences from Mel Brooks, Alan Alda, Carol Kane, Harry Connick Jr., Rain Pryor, and others; the New York premiere will be introduced by executive producer Julie Nimoy and followed by a talk with Frank, writer Glenn Kirschbaum, and Peter Ostrum, who played Charlie Bucket in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, his only film role.
Below are five films to watch out for; most screenings throughout the festival will be followed by a discussion with directors, producers, subjects, cast members, or experts.
The 1939 Yiddish melodrama Mothers of Today will be shown at NYJFF in a 35mm restoration
MOTHERS OF TODAY (Henry Lynn, 1939)
Thursday, January 11, 2:30
Sunday, January 14, 12:00
www.filmlinc.org
Yiddish radio star Esther Field, the “Yiddishe Mama,” made her only film appearance in Henry Lynn’s 1939 shund film, Mothers of Today, being shown in a 35mm restoration at the festival, followed by a discussion with National Center for Jewish Film codirectors Lisa Rivo and Sharon Rivo. It’s a working-class immigration melodrama about a widow trying to hold on to Jewish tradition as her children begin straying from the religion in America. The film was shot in the Bronx and features Jewish songs and prayers, including the Kiddush, “Got Fun Avrohom,” and Kol Nidrei.
Gad Elmaleh’s autobiographical comedy Stay with Us deals with religious conversion
STAY WITH US (Gad Elmaleh, 2022)
Thursday, January 11, 5:30
Wednesday, January 24, 4:00
www.filmlinc.org
A minor controversy erupted when it was reported in 2022 that Moroccan-Canadian-French Jewish comedian and actor Gad Elmaleh had converted to Christianity. It wasn’t true, but Elmaleh had studied Christianity extensively, resulting in his autobiographical comedy Stay with Us, in which he plays a Jewish man named Gad who announces to his family, played by his actual mother, father, and sister, that he is converting to Catholicism. Just wait till you see his parents’ reaction when his mother finds a statue of the Virgin Mary in his suitcase. “Get your fingers off it!” his father declares.
The Books He Didn’t Burn goes inside Adolf Hitler’s private library
THE BOOKS HE DIDN’T BURN (Claus Bredenbrock & Jascha Hannover, 2023)
Monday, January 15, 1:00
www.filmlinc.org
Jeremy Irons narrates Claus Bredenbrock and Jascha Hannover’s The Books He Didn’t Burn, which asks the question “Can literature provide a handbook for mass murder?” as American historian Timothy Ryback examines Adolf Hitler’s book collection, which totaled sixteen thousand at the time of his suicide. “Our whole notion, going back to the ancient Greeks, that art, beauty, literature ennobles the human spirit . . . Hitler’s library turns this whole thing on its head,” Ryback says in the film. Hannover will participate in a discussion after the screening.
Isabelle Cottenceau immerses viewers into the life and career of designer Gaby Aghion in Looking for Chloé
LOOKING FOR CHLOÉ (Isabelle Cottenceau, 2023)
Saturday, January 20, 7:00
www.filmlinc.org
The Jewish Museum is currently hosting the wide-ranging exhibition “Mood of the Moment: Gaby Aghion and the House of Chloé,” about the Jewish Egyptian entrepreneur who founded the French fashion house Chloé. In Looking for Chloé, Isabelle Cottenceau follows the life and career of Gaby Aghion, who was born Gabrielle Hanoka in Egypt in 1921; launched Chloé in 1952; hired Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, and Phoebe Philo; and had such clients as Brigitte Bardot, Jackie Kennedy, and Maria Callas. Aghion was married to her husband, gallery owner and fellow political activist and intellectual Raymond Aghion, for nearly seventy years and was a leader in the development of prêt-à-porter. Producer Sophie Jeaneau and Museum at FIT director Dr. Valerie Steele will be on hand for a postscreening discussion.
Adam Low digs deep into James Joyce’s 1922 novel, Ulysses, in 2022 doc
JAMES JOYCE’S ULYSSES (Adam Low, 2022)
Sunday, January 21, 1:00
www.filmlinc.org
In honor of the centennial of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, documentarian Adam Low goes behind-the-scenes of the writing, publication, and legacy of the notoriously difficult 1922 novel, set during one June day in Dublin in 1904. In the film, British journalist and novelist Howard Jacobson declares that the book is “the greatest Jewish novel of the twentieth century — the first one with a Jew at its very center,” Leopold Bloom. Low also speaks with Salman Rushdie, Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright, Eimear McBride, Paul Muldoon, John McCourt, Nuala O’Connor, Vivienne Igoe, and others as he details the heroic efforts by such people as Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, Sylvia Beach, Harriet Shaw Weaver, and Nora Barnacle, who played such important roles in its ultimate success. Low and producer Martin Rosenbaum will be on hand for a postscreening talk.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]