David Henson (Michael Hayden) shares his story — but not his motives — with Emily (Molly Ranson) in The Honey Trap (photo by Carol Rosegg)
THE HONEY TRAP
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West Twenty-Second St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through November 23, $60-$125 irishrep.org
Inspired by Ed Moloney’s Belfast Project at Boston College, in which audio interviews were conducted with approximately fifty former paramilitaries involved in the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and ’80s, Leo McGann’s The Honey Trap is a gripping thriller that explores the Troubles in a unique and compelling way.
The play begins in the dark, with snippets of dialogue heard in voiceover from former members of the IRA, the UDR, and a Scottish soldier talking about the thirty-year conflict. “They act holier than thou but they were rotten to the core. They couldn’t kill us themselves so they got their death squads to do it for them,” a Republican woman says. A former Ulster Defence Regiment man states, “I see them rarely enough but I do now and then. The post office. The big supermarket. Petrol station sometimes. I look them straight in the eye. They know what they did.”
As the voiceovers fade out, we see Emily (Molly Ranson), a twentysomething American PhD candidate and researcher, sitting at a table preparing to interview David Henson (Michael Hayden), a former British soldier. He is suspicious of Emily’s possible biases, as the vast majority of her previous subjects were on the side of the IRA, but he sees this as an opportunity to set the record straight. “Okay. I mean, I know you’re more interested in talking to IRA types, but here we are. I’m glad I’m going to get a chance to tell you the truth. Because you won’t get that from them,” he says. She responds, “We’re thrilled that you’re telling your truth.” To which he shoots back, “My truth? No. The truth.”
For the next two hours (with intermission), the play shifts between the present and 1979, when the young Dave (Daniel Marconi) and his friend and fellow soldier, Bobby (Harrison Tipping), had a night out that ended up with Bobby’s murder, a case that was never solved. We gradually disover that Dave is not speaking with Emily merely to share his story but also to find out who killed Bobby — and perhaps exact revenge.
In 1979, Dave and Bobby, who are both married, are at a pub after a tough day working riot control in West Belfast. As part of a game meant to embarrass Bobby, Dave forces his mate to approach two young women, Kirsty (Doireann Mac Mahon) and Lisa (Annabelle Zasowski), despite Bobby’s initial reluctance. Soon the four of them are flirting.
The action occurs in flashback around the table where Emily is interviewing Dave, who carefully watches his memories unfold as Emily continues to probe. Dave insists that he and Bobby were at the bar just to relax and have a few pints. “Did you have any idea anything was amiss?” she asks. He replies, “Not a clue.”
Dave eventually takes off, leaving Bobby with the two women. “And that was it. Last I ever saw of him,” Dave explains. “They took him to some flat just outside Belfast. We don’t know if they interrogated him first or what. Then someone shot him twice in the head. His own mum wouldn’t have recognised him. But they left his army ID in his pocket. So that made it a bit easier. Thoughtful of them, eh?”
In the second act, the modern-day Dave travels to South Belfast to meet Sonia (Samantha Mathis), who he believes knows exactly what happened to Bobby that night.
Leo McGann’s The Honey Trap at Irish Rep travels between the present and 1979 (photo by Carol Rosegg)
Every character gets more than they bargained for in The Honey Trap. McGann (Friends Like These,In the Moment) and director Matt Torney (The White Chip,Stop the Tempo), both of whom grew up in Belfast, maintain a simmering tension all the way to an explosive conclusion, with plenty of shocks and surprises, overcoming a few awkward moments. At the center of it all is the older Dave, who is onstage the entire show, either in the present day meeting with Emily and Sonia or watching his younger self on the night his life changed forever.
Tony and Olivier nominee Hayden (Judgment at Nuremberg,Carousel) is riveting as Dave, a private man on a quest while fighting off his demons; it will make you wonder what you would do if given the opportunity to watch scenes from your past unfurl before your very eyes. The rest of the cast is strong, led by a tender performance by Mathis (33 Variations,Make Believe) as a woman who thought she had escaped her past.
Master set designer Charlie Corcoran expertly integrates the different time periods and locations, from the unionist pub to a coffee shop to a bedroom, enhanced by Sarita Fellows’s casual and military costumes and Michael Gottlieb’s sharp lighting, switching between brightness and dark, shadowy interiors. James Garver’s sound ranges from the voiceovers to a loud pub and a quiet café.
The Honey Trap — which takes its name from the form of covert deception in which an operative uses seduction to lure someone into a manipulative situation — is another winner from the Irish Rep, a complex play that explores issues of guilt, responsibility, trauma, and vengeance that might be about a specific fictional event but feels all too relevant in today’s world.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Christopher Nelius’s Whistle is the opening-night selection of the 2025 DOC NYC festival
DOC NYC 2025 IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St. Village East by Angelika
181-189 Second Ave. at 12th St. SVA Theatre
333 West Twenty-Third St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
November 12-21, $13-$30 per screening, ten-ticket package $170 www.docnyc.net
The 2025 iteration of the annual DOC NYC festival, ten days of documentary shorts, features, and animated works at IFC Center, the Village East, the SVA Theatre, and online, gets underway November 12 with the opening-night selection, Christopher Nelius’s Whistle, about Carole Anne Kaufman, the Whistling Diva, and other mouth musicians at the Masters of Musical Whistling festival in Hollywood. Kaufman will participate in a postscreening Q&A with fellow whistlers Jay Winston, Lauren Elder, Molly Lewis, Anya Ziordia Botella, and Davitt Felder. There are two centerpiece films: Carl Deal and Tia Lessin’s Steal This Story, Please! follows around activist journalist and Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman, who will appear with the directors at two shows, November 13 and 14, while Celia Aniskovich’s The Merchants of Joy delves into the New York City Christmas tree trade. The closing night film is Ivy Meeropol’s Ask E. Jean, which tells the story of E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued Donald Trump twice.
The festival is divided into such sections as “Resilience,” “Fight the Power,” “Investigations,” and “Sonic Cinema” in addition to several competitions; among the many highlights are Raoul Peck’s Orwell: 2+2=5, Alan Berliner’s Benita, Ian Bell’s WTO/99, Joe Beshenkovsky and James A. Smith’s Mata Hari, Isa Willinger’s No Mercy, Tyler Measom and Craig A. Williams’s If These Walls Could Rock, and Amy Berg’s It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley.
Below is a closer look at some of the standouts; keep watching this space for more reviews as DOC NYC continues.
Elizabeth Lo is given remarkable access to a love triangle in award-winning documentary Mistress Dispeller
MISTRESS DISPELLER (Elizabeth Lo, 2024)
Village East
Thursday, November 13, 9:20 www.docnyc.net
In her debut feature-length documentary, 2020’s Stray, Elizabeth Lo tracked a remarkable homeless canine named Keytin as the golden mutt lived a dog’s life on the streets of Istanbul, allowing Lo to capture his every move, telling the dog’s story from his perspective.
Lo has followed that up with Mistress Dispeller, in which the participants in a love triangle allow Lo to capture their every move, telling their story from each of their unique perspectives.
Taking inspiration from Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai due Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles and Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Lo’s film explores a relatively new “love industry” in China, mistress dispellers, who, for fees of tens of thousands of dollars and more, are hired by women who believe their husbands are having an affair; over the course of two or three months, the dispeller, using a false identity, ultimately convinces the mistress to end the illicit romance through a structured technique. They do so in a calm, unobtrusive way, treating all three parties with dignity and respect.
It took three years for Lo to find mistress dispeller Wang Zhenxi, then get permission to document one of her cases, in which Mrs. Li wants to end her husband’s affair with the younger Fei Fei. Wang poses as a cousin of Mr. Li’s who is interested in learning the married couple’s favorite pastime, badminton. Wang carefully orchestrates various meetings in which she spends time alone with the mistress, studies her motivations and emotions, and comes up with a plan. Lo’s mounted, still camera is in every room, every car — but not necessarily Lo, who sometimes leaves the camera recording as she exits the space, permitting her subjects to talk more openly without her watching. “I am just a vessel in their lives,” Wang says, and so is Lo. (Lo had previously interviewed Mrs. Li’s younger brother, who was a dispelled male mistress and recommends Wang in the film.)
Although it is made clear from the start that this is not some kind of game, there are winners and losers. “It’s just like a war. You either win or lose everything,” Wang explains. Fei Fei admits, “Winning or losing isn’t the question. Actually, neither is important to me anymore. Because there are many more important things than winning.” But later she states, “I can’t keep losing though, right? Everyone wants to win. Why can’t the winner be me?”
Lo directed, produced, and photographed the film in addition to writing and editing it with Charlotte Munch Bengtsen. She gives equal weight to Mr. Li, Mrs. Li, and Fei Fei while delving into Wang’s methods. Time and money is never discussed; instead, Lo focuses on the care Wang employs in her business, determined to achieve a satisfying result for all involved. The access Lo is supplied is astounding; of course, only Mrs. Li knows what’s happening at first, but soon Mr. Li understands as well, while Fei Fei discovers the deception only at the conclusion.
Lo does not seek to elicit any judgments, but she includes several scenes in which Mrs. Li and Fei Fei carefully tend to their personal style, taking care to dress well and get their hair done, while Mr. Li, the object of each woman’s affection, is not exactly a fashion plate or a great conversationalist. However, the film does not ask us to question the love — and we know from the start that Wang’s goal is to restore the marriage, with the mistress out of the picture.
In a program note, Fei Fei says, “I am willing to participate in filming because, considering the long river of life, this is a small part of it. But it’s also something that’s significant to me right now. I see this as a documentary of my life. It is also a portrait of love. From the beginning of our encounter, to the middle of the relationship, and the end, it’s all part of this process of love. . . . Love doesn’t disappear, it just diverts. It’s just a process of love moving around. It’s quite meaningful to make time to recall and witness the process for yourself — whether the path you take is right or not. . . . When others see this film, they might gain some insights from it.”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Li explains, “Teacher Wang taught me a lot. About love, and other things. She said, ‘Look, you are going through this, this difficulty, and we should film it, so more women, more people, can face their families and learn how to handle a situation like this. . . .’ I want more people to know that love doesn’t come easy, especially for people at our age. Don’t give up so easily.”
The film also touches on aspects of contemporary Chinese dating, from matchmaking seminars and fairs to online channels. Lo occasionally cuts away for drone shots of cities and mountainous landscapes, incorporating all of China into the narrative, merging the inner and outer worlds of the people and the country.
Mistress Dispeller screens November 13 at the Village East, with Lo and producer Emma D. Miller on hand for a Q&A.
Award-winning filmmaker explores the life and career of Benita Raphan in new documentary
BENITA (Alan Berliner, 2025)
IFC Center
Friday, November 14, 7:00
Village East
Sunday, November 16, 11:30 am www.docnyc.net
Shortly after learning of his friend and longtime collaborator Benita Raphan’s suicide on June 10, 2021, documentarian Alan Berliner was asked by her family if he would complete the film she was working on when she died, at the age of fifty-eight. They gave him full access to her extensive archives, comprising notebooks, outtakes, drawings, photographs, and other ephemera. Berliner spent a year doing research and ultimately decided instead to make a film about her, in an attempt to better understand Betina as a person and filmmaker and, perhaps, why she hanged herself.
“Think of this film as an experiment in collaboration,” Berliner says at the start of the aptly titled Benita. “Benita left behind thousands of pieces; my job was to splice them together, to make a mash-up of our different filmmaking styles, to do whatever it takes to bring Benita’s creative spirit to life. But as much as anything, I also just wanted the joy of being able to work with Benita, one final time.”
Berliner conducted new interviews with more than a dozen people from Betina’s private life and professional career, including her mother, Roslyn Raphan; her friends Lucy Eldridge, Shari Spiegel, Miriam Kuznets, and Eric Latzky; her former boyfriend Eric Hoffert of the Speedies; composers Hayes Greenfield and Robert Miller, and SVA chair Richard Wilde. Together they paint a portrait of an eclectic, unusual, and caring avant-garde artist who was able to charm people into participating in the creation of her films — for free. Among the numerous words they use to describe her are “complex,” “serious,” “charismatic,” “a singular soul,” “a nonconformist,” “unpredictable,” “an irregular verb,” “nervous,” “anxious,” “intense,” “incredibly humble,” “fragile,” “vulnerable,” and “a scientist in an artist’s body.”
“I want to work on fun stuff, and her stuff is fun,” sound designer Marshall Grupp says.
“I wanted to help her, I wanted her to succeed,” notes postproduction facilitator Rosemary Quigley.
Producer, director, writer, editor, and narrator Berliner incorporates scenes from about half of Benita’s thirteen short films, focusing on ones that explore creativity, intelligence, and mental illness: 2002’s 2+2 (mathematician John Nash), 2004’s The Critical Path (architect Buckminster Fuller), 2008’s Great Genius and Profound Stupidity (author Helen Keller), and 2018’s Up to Astonishment (poet Emily Dickinson).
“Benita’s films aren’t really meant to be understood,” Berliner (First Cousin Once Removed,Intimate Stranger) explains. “She’s more interested in helping you make connections and stirring up feelings about her subjects using abstraction, layering, and rapid editing, sometimes all at once, to express things that can’t always be put into words, things like dreams, stream of consciousness, or visual metaphors. When Benita takes us inside the complicated minds of her subjects, she’s also trying to show us what it’s like inside her own.”
The film excerpts reminded me of the work of experimentalists Hollis Frampton, Stan Brakhage, and Maya Deren and such surrealists as Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí yet wholly original. Clips in which Benita is filming her shadow as she walks down the sidewalk or crunching on ice are poetically beautiful and memorable.
A 2019 Guggenheim fellow, Benita wrote down such thoughts as “Don’t be afraid to have bad ideas,” “Mistakes are an opportunity to start again & do it right,” and “Celebrate the confusion.” However, her more recent words ranged from “afraid” and “lost” to “I’m not myself” and “falling apart.”
She spent more time by herself near the end, dedicating many of her days to her dogs, including one who had severe psychological issues and another she named Rothko, after abstract painter Mark Rothko, who committed suicide in 1970 at the age of sixty-six. “Dogs don’t repeat any of your secrets,” she wrote.
Berliner captures Benita’s inner strength and unique style, but it’s not always possible to figure out why someone chooses death over life; mental illness is too often too difficult to diagnose, especially among friends and relatives.
Benita is making its world premiere at DOC NYC, screening November 14 at IFC Center and November 16 at the Village East, with Berliner, the recipient of last year’s DOC NYC Lifetime Achievement Award, on hand for Q&As following each show.
Documentary explores Seattle protests against the WTO in 1999 (photo by Rustin Thompson)
WTO/99 (Ian Bell, 2025)
Village East
Friday, November 14, 9:00
IFC Center
Monday, November 17, 1:00
Online November 15-30 www.wto99doc.com www.docnyc.net
Young and old march through the streets, forming blockades and human chains. Signs denounce globalization and corporatization. Angry farmers and union workers demand they be heard. Cries of fascism ring out. Local police, state troopers, and the National Guard douse protesters with pepper spray and tear gas, toss flash-bang grenades, and shoot the crowd with rubber bullets. Mysterious agitators in all black smash store windows. Donald Trump and Roger Stone weigh in on free trade and tariffs.
A documentary about government intervention into blue cities in 2025? A “No Kings” rally gone bad? Clips from the Rodney King and George Floyd protests?
No, Ian Bell’s riveting WTO/99 is composed exclusively of archival footage of the Battle of Seattle, when, beginning on November 30, 1999, tens of thousands of local, national, and international men and women took to the streets to protest the WTO Ministerial Conference being held in the largest municipality in the State of Washington. Bell includes no talking heads, no experts, no eyewitnesses, only film and video taken by news organizations and individuals. No one is identified by name, and occasional interstitial text notes the time and day, with just little bits of information.
Two early exchanges set the tone. After buying a gas mask, a pair of twentysomethings are preparing to head into Seattle. “I know we are all hoping this is gonna be peaceful, but do you think that the police will use tear gas?” the man asks. The woman answers, “I’m gonna say that, no, they’re not going to use tear gas.” The man says, “What do you think would make them go to that extreme?” The woman responds, “They would go to those extremes if there was a need for it. That’s the positive attention that I want to set out there for them, that they would do it if there’s a need, and I don’t think that there will be.”
On the TV show Seattle Police: Beyond the Badge, a law enforcement official explains, “We’re not looking to provoke anything; in fact, Seattle has a long and well-deserved history of working well with demonstrators, regardless of their views.”
Both sides might have been hoping for peace, but violence escalates as the WTO has to rearrange its schedule. Mayor Paul Schell proclaims, “The city is safe,” despite evidence to the contrary.
Among the familiar faces getting in sound bites are Bernie Sanders, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Roger Stone, Michael Moore, Amy Goodman, Tom Hayden, Ralph Nader, Howard Schultz, and Alan Keyes. At a club, a supergroup consisting of Dead Kennedys leader Jello Biafra, Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, and Sweet 75 drummer Gina Mainwal rock out for the cause.
In his feature documentary directorial debut, Seattle native Bell and co-editor Alex Megaro weave in events coming from both sides in a fury that matches what is happening on the ground; much of the footage is jerky and low-tech, adding to the chaos. “I think we all need to thank the inventor of video cameras,” one man says.
The film evokes such other poignant works about protests and rallies as Stefano Savona’s Tahrir: Liberation Square, David France’s How to Survive a Plague, and Daniel Lindsay and T. J. Martin’s LA 92, but WTO/99 feels particularly relevant now, given what is happening with ICE and the National Guard in cities all across the country.
“I’ve never seen the United States come to this,” another man says, but now it seems to be happening every week, available for everyone to watch on their smartphones as the discord unfolds in real time.
WTO/99 is screening November 14 at the Village East, followed by a Q&A with Bell, Megaro, producer Laura Tatham, and archival producer Debra McClutchy, and November 17 at IFC Center; it will be available online November 15– 30.
Meredith Monk looks at her past, present, and future in Billy Shebar’s celebratory and deeply affecting documentary
MONK IN PIECES: A CONCEPT ALBUM (Billy Shebar, 2025)
Village East
Wednesday, November 19, 3:45 www.docnyc.net monkinpieces.com
Near the beginning of Billy Shebar’s revelatory documentary, Monk in Pieces, composer Philip Glass explains that Meredith Monk “was a self-contained theater company. She, amongst all of us, I think, was the uniquely gifted one — is the uniquely gifted one.” It’s an important correction because Monk, at eighty-three, is still hard at work, creating live performances and films that defy categorization.
While several of her earliest projects were met with derision in critical circles, today she is revered for her remarkable output, although it is still impossible to put her into any kind of box. At one point in the documentary, a chorus of Monk scholars sings her praises; one says, “She’s achieved so much, has received so many accolades, and yet she’s this unknown,” a second notes, “She kind of falls through the cracks of music history,” and a third admits, “We don’t know how to talk about her.”
Written, directed, and produced by Shebar — whose wife, coproducer Katie Geissinger, has been performing with Monk since 1990 — and David Roberts, Monk in Pieces does a wonderful job of righting those wrongs, celebrating her artistic legacy while she shares private elements of her personal and professional life. Born and raised in Manhattan, Monk details her vision problem, known as strabismus, in which she is unable to see out of both eyes simultaneously in three dimensions, which led her to concentrate on vocals and the movement of her physical self. She studied Dalcroze Eurhythmics: “All musical ideas come from the body; I think that’s where I’m coming from,” she says. All these decades later, her distinctive choreography and wordless tunes are still like nothing anyone else does.
Meredith Monk shares a special moment with her beloved turtle, Neutron
Unfolding at a Monk-like unhurried pace, the ninety-five-minute documentary is divided into thematic chapters based on her songs, including “Dolmen Music,” “Double Fiesta,” “Memory Song,” “Turtle Dreams,” and “Teeth Song,” while exploring such presentations as Juice (1969), the first theatrical event to be held at the Guggenheim; Education of the Girlchild (1973), in which a woman ages in reverse; Quarry (1976), a three-part opera about an American child sick in bed during WWII; Impermanence (2006), inspired by the sudden death of her partner, Mieke von Hook; and her masterwork, Atlas (1991), in which the Houston Grand Opera worries about her numerous requests and production costs, whether the piece will be ready in time, and if it even can be considered opera. There are also clips from Ellis Island,Book of Days,Facing North, and Indra’s Net, her latest show, which was staged at Park Ave. Armory last fall. In addition, Monk reads from her journals in scenes with playful animation by Paul Barritt.
Monk opened up her archives for the filmmakers, so Shebar, Roberts, and editor Sabine Krayenbühl incorporate marvelous photos and video from throughout Monk’s career, along with old and new interviews. “It was her voice that was so extraordinary, not only the different kind of sounds she could make, but the imagination she was using in producing the sound . . . totally individual,” Merce Cunningham says. WNYC New Sounds host John Schaefer gushes, “I don’t know when words like multimedia and interdisciplinary began to become in vogue, but Meredith was all of those things.” Her longtime friend and collaborator Ping Chong offers, “She had to fight to be acknowledged in the performing arts world because critics were saying that what she was doing was nonsensical, was crazy, was not serious; in a way, it’s a fight to survive. Pain is where art comes from. . . . Art has to come out of need. And now she’s an old master.”
And Björk, who recorded Monk’s “Gotham Lullaby,” touts, “Meredith’s melody making is like a timeless door that’s opened, like a gateway to the ancient is found. It definitely affected my DNA. . . . Her loft that she has lived in for half a century is an oasis in a toxic environment.” Among the other collaborators who chime in are longtime company member Lanny Harrison; composer Julia Wolfe; and David Byrne, for whom she created the opening scene of his 1986 film, True Stories, and who says he learned from Monk that “you can do things without words and it still has meaning, it still has an emotional connection.”
Some of the most beautiful moments of the film transpire in Monk’s loft, where she tends to her beloved forty-two-year-old turtle named Neutron, puts stuffed animals on her bed, meditates while staring at windows lined with Tibetan prayer flags, composes a new song, looks into a mirror as she braids her trademark pigtails, and sits at her small kitchen table, eating by herself. Surrounded by plants and personal photographs, she moves about slowly, profoundly alone, comfortable in who she is and what she has accomplished, contemplating what comes next.
“What happens when I’m not here anymore?” Monk, who received the 2014 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama, asks while working with director Yuval Sharon, conductor Francisco J. Núñez, and performer Joanna Lynn Jacobs on a remounting of Atlas for the LA Philharmonic in 2019. “It’s very rare that anybody gets it.”
Monk in Pieces goes a long way toward rectifying that, filling in the cracks, helping define her place in music history.
Monk in Pieces screens November 19 at 3:45 at the Village East; followed by a Q&A with Monk, Shebar, Krayenbühl, and producer Susan Margolin.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the Everglades. I loved Gentle Ben, the television series starring Dennis Weaver, Clint Howard, and a seven-hundred-pound bear, set in and around the Everglades; the show opened with the three of them speeding through swampland on an airboat. When we visited my grandparents in Florida, a trip to the Everglades was often on the agenda, but I did not encounter the cuddly bear.
Thus, I felt a personal connection when watching Sasha Wortzel’s debut feature-length documentary; for the filmmaker, the experience was “profoundly personal.”
Wortzel wrote, directed, narrated, produced (with Danielle Varga), and edited (with Rebecca Adorno Dávila) River of Grass, a poetic work about the battle to preserve the Everglades, the region in Florida where she was born and raised. Eight years in the making, the “project grows out of my process grappling with what it means to be from a place that may cease to exist in my lifetime and with the complexities of ‘home’ in a settler colonial landscape,” she explains in her director statement.
The documentary was inspired by The Everglades: River of Grass, the 1947 book by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, published the same year President Harry S. Truman dedicated the Everglades as a national park. Douglas was a longtime resident of Coconut Grove in Miami — she died there in 1998 at the age of 108, having spent much of her life as an environmental activist. In addition to writing the book, she organized the Friends of the Everglades in 1969, and she is the namesake of the Parkland, Florida, high school where the 2018 Valentine’s Day shooting occurred.
“Man’s life on earth is limited by the conflict between his stupidity and his intelligence,” Stoneman Douglas says in the film, which includes rare archival audio and movie footage that Wortzel was surprised to find. “I think man can prolong his life on the earth for many thousands of years if he is intelligent, but I don’t know whether he’s intelligent enough. I just don’t know.”
All these years later, that intelligence is still up for debate as governments and corporations continue to display little or no respect for the natural environment as they mess with nature’s cycle. Wortzel introduces us to park ranger Leon Howell, who discusses the importance of the alligator to the ecosystem; Donna and Deanna Kalil, a mother and daughter team who spot and catch pythons, who negatively impact the area; two-spirit Miccosukee environmentalist and poet Houston R. Cypress, who talks about the tree islands, where his Native American ancestors would take refuge from soldiers hunting them down (Cypress is also a consulting producer on the film and a member of the Love the Everglades Movement); Kina Phillips, who advocates against the burning of the sugarcane crop, which releases toxic chemicals into the air and water; and the Stokes family, sixth-generation fishers whose livelihood is in jeopardy because of the draining and development of the Everglades.
Most significantly, we meet tireless activist and educator Betty Osceola, who, among many other things, leads prayer walks to protect the water. “I always talk to water, and I listen. Water has life. It has memory. If you slow down and listen and you pay attention, you can actually start hearing it and seeing what it’s trying to tell you,” Osceola, seen navigating in an airboat, says.
The documentary has a choppy, disjointed narrative as it winds between the past and the present. The participants and their affiliations are not identified, and Wortzel speaks only with those seeking to save the Everglades.
However, it is beautifully photographed by cinematographer J. Bennett, who captures gorgeous shots of the moon and sun over the Gulf of Mexico, stunning panoramas of the landscape, and striking vistas of the eight prayer walkers seen far in the distance, dedicated to what might be an impossible task but determined to keep up the fight.
But perhaps the most memorable image is that of Stoneman Douglas’s empty chair, sitting empty amid the destruction wrought by Hurricane Ian in 2022.
River of Grass opens October 24 at DCTV Firehouse Cinema, with Wortzel on hand for six special events: postscreening Q&As with Varga, and Bennett, moderated by Tourmaline, on October 24 at 7:00; with Sierra Pettengill on October 25 at 7:00; with musician Angélica Negron and Keith Wilson on October 26 at 6:00 (Negron will also perform before the showing); with Osceola and Joseph Pierce on October 28 at 7:00; with Osceola and Arielle Angel on October 29 at 6:30; and with Lauren O’Neill Butler and Dominic Davis on October 30 at 7:00.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Elizabeth Lo is given remarkable access to a love triangle in award-winning documentary Mistress Dispeller
MISTRESS DISPELLER (Elizabeth Lo, 2024)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Wednesday, October 22 www.ifccenter.com
In her debut feature-length documentary, 2020’s Stray, Elizabeth Lo tracked a remarkable homeless canine named Keytin as the golden mutt lived a dog’s life on the streets of Istanbul, allowing Lo to capture his every move, telling the dog’s story from his perspective.
Lo has followed that up with Mistress Dispeller, in which the participants in a love triangle allow Lo to capture their every move, telling their story from each of their unique perspectives.
Taking inspiration from Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai due Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles and Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Lo’s film explores a relatively new “love industry” in China, mistress dispellers, who, for fees of tens of thousands of dollars and more, are hired by women who believe their husbands are having an affair; over the course of two or three months, the dispeller, using a false identity, ultimately convinces the mistress to end the illicit romance through a structured technique. They do so in a calm, unobtrusive way, treating all three parties with dignity and respect.
It took three years for Lo to find mistress dispeller Wang Zhenxi, then get permission to document one of her cases, in which Mrs. Li wants to end her husband’s affair with the younger Fei Fei. Wang poses as a cousin of Mr. Li’s who is interested in learning the married couple’s favorite pastime, badminton. Wang carefully orchestrates various meetings in which she spends time alone with the mistress, studies her motivations and emotions, and comes up with a plan. Lo’s mounted, still camera is in every room, every car — but not necessarily Lo, who sometimes leaves the camera recording as she exits the space, permitting her subjects to talk more openly without her watching. “I am just a vessel in their lives,” Wang says, and so is Lo. (Lo had previously interviewed Mrs. Li’s younger brother, who was a dispelled male mistress and recommends Wang in the film.)
Although it is made clear from the start that this is not some kind of game, there are winners and losers. “It’s just like a war. You either win or lose everything,” Wang explains. Fei Fei admits, “Winning or losing isn’t the question. Actually, neither is important to me anymore. Because there are many more important things than winning.” But later she states, “I can’t keep losing though, right? Everyone wants to win. Why can’t the winner be me?”
Lo directed, produced, and photographed the film in addition to writing and editing it with Charlotte Munch Bengtsen. She gives equal weight to Mr. Li, Mrs. Li, and Fei Fei while delving into Wang’s methods. Time and money is never discussed; instead, Lo focuses on the care Wang employs in her business, determined to achieve a satisfying result for all involved. The access Lo is supplied is astounding; of course, only Mrs. Li knows what’s happening at first, but soon Mr. Li understands as well, while Fei Fei discovers the deception only at the conclusion.
Lo does not seek to elicit any judgments, but she includes several scenes in which Mrs. Li and Fei Fei carefully tend to their personal style, taking care to dress well and get their hair done, while Mr. Li, the object of each woman’s affection, is not exactly a fashion plate or a great conversationalist. However, the film does not ask us to question the love — and we know from the start that Wang’s goal is to restore the marriage, with the mistress out of the picture.
In a program note, Fei Fei says, “I am willing to participate in filming because, considering the long river of life, this is a small part of it. But it’s also something that’s significant to me right now. I see this as a documentary of my life. It is also a portrait of love. From the beginning of our encounter, to the middle of the relationship, and the end, it’s all part of this process of love. . . . Love doesn’t disappear, it just diverts. It’s just a process of love moving around. It’s quite meaningful to make time to recall and witness the process for yourself — whether the path you take is right or not. . . . When others see this film, they might gain some insights from it.”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Li explains, “Teacher Wang taught me a lot. About love, and other things. She said, ‘Look, you are going through this, this difficulty, and we should film it, so more women, more people, can face their families and learn how to handle a situation like this. . . .’ I want more people to know that love doesn’t come easy, especially for people at our age. Don’t give up so easily.”
The film also touches on aspects of contemporary Chinese dating, from matchmaking seminars and fairs to online channels. Lo occasionally cuts away for drone shots of cities and mountainous landscapes, incorporating all of China into the narrative, merging the inner and outer worlds of the people and the country.
Mistress Dispeller opens October 22 at IFC Center, with Lo on hand for Q&As at the 6:35 screenings on Wednesday with Penny Lane and Thursday with Constance Wu; Lo and Wu will also deliver an extended introduction before the 9:00 show on Saturday.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Mala Emde is hypnotic as teenage concert promoter Vera Brandes in Ido Fluk’s Köln 75
KÖLN 75 (Ido Fluk, 2025)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, October 17 www.ifccenter.com
In Ido Fluk’s exciting, propulsive Köln 75, if teenage concert promoter Vera Brandes (Mala Emde) is going to make the impossible happen and first book master pianist Keith Jarrett (John Magaro) for the first-ever jazz show at the Cologne Opera House in Germany, sell tickets, and then convince Jarrett to actually take the stage and perform, she’ll need to improvise like, well, a jazz legend.
Inspired by a true story, the film begins at Vera’s (Susanne Wolff) fiftieth birthday party, where her father (Ulrich Tukur) makes a surprise, unwelcome appearance. “When she was young, she had a lot of potential,” he says in what is supposed to be a celebratory toast. “She is, without a doubt, my greatest disappointment.”
Vera turns to look into the camera and confidently declares, “Let’s do this again!” The action then shifts to the 1970s, with Jazzworld magazine critic-at-large Michael “Mick” Watts (Michael Chernus) discussing some of the most famous recorded false starts in music history. We then meet Vera when she’s sixteen, a freewheeling, free-loving jazz fan into John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, and Dexter Gordon. One night she goes to a club to see British saxophonist Ronnie Scott (Daniel Betts), who, after hanging out with Vera, asks her to book a German tour for him even though she has zero experience. (She tells him she’s twenty-five.) When she asks why her, he answers, “Because I can’t imagine anyone turning you down.”
Soon Vera, her older boyfriend, Jan (Enno Trebs), her best friend, Isa (Shirin Eissa), and a young man she’s just met, Oliver (Leon Blohm), are putting together shows and living life in the fast lane, much to the chagrin of Vera’s stodgy and humorless conservative dentist father and mother (Jördis Triebel).
After watching Jarrett perform a solo concert, Vera decides that she must book the pianist into the Cologne Opera House, staking her entire music future on it even as she faces roadblock upon roadblock, from the opera house’s total lack of support to Jarrett’s unpredictability, neuroses, and nearly debilitating back pain. As Jarrett and his producer, Manfred Eicher (Alexander Scheer), set out on an eight-hour drive with Watts to get to Germany, Vera is determined to not let multiple problems stop her from staging the show and forging her career.
Emde (And Tomorrow the Whole World,303) is hypnotic as Vera, who is always thinking, always planning, never sitting still; like Scott said, you can’t imagine anyone turning her down. Emde imbues Vera with endless bursts of energy, emotion, and an infectious joie de vivre even when everything is falling apart. Magaro (Past Lives,September 5) offers a terrific counterpoint as Jarrett, who is overwhelmed by a bundle of nerves and a lack of confidence despite his success. As Watts, Chernus (Severance,Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy) serves as a calming force somewhere in between them, speaking directly to the audience as a concerned observer, a journalist who keeps being told that he cannot use anything he witnesses in his story. (Although there was a real jazz writer with the same name, the character is a composite of several people.)
In making the film, writer-director Fluk (The Ticket,Never Too Late) ran into numerous problems of his own, so he and his crew had to improvise as well; for example, the Cologne Opera was not available, so they had to find an alternate space in Poland, and Jarrett and his record company chose not to cooperate, so Fluk could not use Jarrett’s actual music. However, Fluk did have an eight-hour conversation with the real Vera Brandes, who had been waiting fifty years to tell her story to someone. Köln 75 works because it’s not primarily about music, or the 1970s, or Keith Jarrett; instead, it’s told from the perspective of an unsung hero, an intoxicating young woman who refuses to let her dreams die.
Köln 75 opens October 17 at IFC Center, with Brandes, Emde, Chernus, and Fluk on hand for Q&As at the 6:45 screenings on Friday and Saturday night.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
THE COMING OF AGE
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
October 12 – November 2 metrograph.com
The Metrograph series “‘The Coming of Age” is not a collection of works about young people discovering themselves as they advance from puberty to adolescence to adulthood. Instead, it explores films about people growing old.
“We’re aging: Older adults are the fastest growing age demographic globally and expected to double in size in the US by 2060. And yet our film culture clings to youth,” series curator Sarah Friedland said in a statement. “‘The Coming of Age’ liberates the genre from the strictures of youth to present an anti-ageist portrait of growing older in global cinema, drawing on my film-viewing research to prepare for the making of my feature debut, Familiar Touch. Presenting films from the silent era up through our current moment of seismic demographic shift, ‘The Coming of Age’ bears the name of Simone de Beauvoir’s seminal 1970 feminist book on aging and borrows the genre as a frame for seeing and celebrating older adults in the fullness and complexity of themselves. What links each film in this series is not aging as a subject but the aging subject’s perspective, showing old age in the diversity of its experience: as a time for pleasure, poetry, resistance, and even revenge.”
Running October 12 through November 2, the series includes a wide range of international selections, from Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection and Yasujirô Ozu’s Tokyo Story to F. W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh and “Choreographies of Aging,” consisting of shorts by such directors as Kevin Jerome Everson, Barbara Hammer, and Friedland, who will take part in a postscreening discussion with director Wen Hu after the October 18 presentation. She will also be on hand October 12 to introduce Familiar Touch with star Kathleen Chalfant and critic Amy Taubin at 5:00 and then introduce Vittorio De Sica’s Umberto D. at 7:30.
Below is a closer look at four of the films.
De Sica neorealist classic is the heartbreaking story of an elderly man and his faithful dog
UMBERTO D. (Vittorio De Sica, 1952)
Sunday, October 12, 7:30
Monday, October 20, 4:45 metrograph.com
You might never stop crying. Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist masterpiece Umberto D. stars Carlo Battisti (a professor whom De Sica saw one day and thought would be perfect for the lead role; it would be Battisti’s only film) as Umberto Domenico Ferrari, an elderly former bureaucrat who is too proud to sacrifice his dignity in order to pay his mean-spirited landlady (Lina Gennari), who rents out his room by the hour while he’s out walking his beloved dog, Flag, and trying to find some way to get money and food. Umberto D. is befriended by the boardinghouse maid (Maria Pia Casilio), who is pregnant with the child of one of two servicemen, neither of whom wants to have anything to do with her. As Umberto D.’s options start running out, he considers desperate measures to free himself from his loneliness and poverty. His relationship with Flag is one of the most moving in cinema history. Don’t miss this remarkable achievement, which was lovingly restored in 2002 for its fiftieth anniversary by eighty-six-year-old lighting specialist Vincenzo Verzini, who was known as Little Giotto.
Yun Jung-hee returned to the screen for the first time in sixteen years in moving Poetry
Returning to the screen for the first time in sixteen years, legendary Korean actress Yun Jung-hee is mesmerizing in Lee Chang-dong’s beautiful, bittersweet, and poetic Poetry. Yun stars as Mija, a lovely but simple woman raising her teenage grandson, Wook (Lee David), and working as a maid for Mr. Kang (Kim Hi-ra), a Viagra-taking old man debilitated from a stroke. When she is told that Wook is involved in the tragic suicide of a classmate (Han Su-young), Mija essentially goes about her business as usual, not outwardly reacting while clearly deeply troubled inside. As the complications in her life grow, she turns to a community poetry class for solace, determined to finish a poem before the memory loss that is causing her to forget certain basic words overwhelms her. Winner of the Best Screenplay award at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, Poetry is a gorgeously understated work, a visual, emotional poem that never drifts from its slow, steady pace. Writer-director Lee (Peppermint Candy,Secret Sunshine) occasionally treads a little too close to clichéd melodrama, but he always gets back on track, sharing the moving story of an unforgettable character. Throughout the film he offers no easy answers, leaving lots of room for interpretation, like poems themselves.
Ian Fiscuteanu brings to life the slow death of a unique character in Cristi Puiu’s very dark comedy
THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU (Cristi Puiu, 2005)
Wednesday, October 22, 6:20 metrograph.com
Poor Mr. Lazarescu. He lives in a shoddy hovel of an apartment in Bucharest, where he drinks too much and gets out too little. He moves around very slowly and has trouble saying what’s on his mind, even to his three cats. His family is sick and tired of telling him to lay off the booze, so they ignore his complaints. Suffering from headaches and stomach pain, he phones for an ambulance several times, but it arrives only after a neighbor calls as well. Mr. Lazarescu then spends the rest of this very long night fading away as he is taken to hospital after hospital by the ambulance nurse, who gets involved in a seemingly endless battle with doctors to try to save him. Ian Fiscuteanu is sensationally realistic as Mr. Lazarescu; you’ll quickly forget that he’s not really a drunk, disgusting, dying old man. Luminita Gheorghiu is excellent as Mioara, the nurse who gets caught up in Mr. Lazarescu’s case. Winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard Award, cowriter-director Cristi Puiu’s very dark comedy is simply captivating; despite a slow start, it’ll pull you in with its well-choreographed scenes, documentary style, and careful camera movement. (Also look for the subtle and very specific naming of characters.) Using Éric Rohmer’s “Six Moral Tales” as inspiration, Puiu has said that The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is the first of his own “Six Stories from the Bucharest Suburbs,” this one dealing with “the love of humanity,” followed by 2010’s Aurora.
Chantal Akerman creates a unique profile of her mother in deeply personal No Home Movie
Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie was meant to be a kind of public eulogy for her beloved mother, Natalia (Nelly) Akerman, who died in 2014 at the age of eighty-six, shortly after Chantal had completed shooting forty hours of material with her. But it also ended up becoming, in its own way, a public eulogy for the highly influential Belgian auteur herself, as she died on October 5, 2015, at the age of sixty-five, only a few months after the film screened to widespread acclaim at several festivals (except at Locarno, where it was actually booed). Her death was reportedly a suicide, following a deep depression brought on by the loss of her mother. No Home Movie primarily consists of static shots inside Nelly’s Brussels apartment as she goes about her usual business, reading, eating, preparing to go for a walk, and taking naps. Akerman sets down either a handheld camera or a smartphone and lets her mother walk in and out of the frame; Akerman very rarely moves the camera or follows her mother around, instead keeping it near doorways and windows. She’s simply capturing the natural rhythms and pace of an old woman’s life. Occasionally the two sit down together in the kitchen and eat while discussing family history and gossip, Judaism, WWII, and the Nazis. (The elder Akerman was a Holocaust survivor who spent time in Auschwitz.) They also Skype each other as Chantal travels to film festivals and other places. “I want to show there is no distance in the world,” she tells her mother, who Skypes back, “You always have such ideas! Don’t you, sweetheart.” In another exchange, the daughter says, “You think I’m good for nothing!” to which the mother replies, “Not at all! You know all sorts of things others don’t know.”
Shots of a tree fluttering in the Israeli wind enhance the peaceful calm of No Home Movie
Later they are joined by Chantal’s sister, Sylviane, as well as Nelly’s home aide. The film features long sections with no dialogue and nobody in the frame; Akerman opens the movie with a four-minute shot of a lone tree with green leaves fluttering in the wind in the foreground, the vast, empty landscape of Israel in the background, where occasionally a barely visible car turns off a far-away road. Akerman returns to Israel several times during the film, sometimes shooting out of a moving car; these sections serve as interludes about the passage of time as well as referencing her family’s Jewish past. At one point, Akerman makes potatoes for her mother that they eat in the kitchen, a direct reference to a scene in Akerman’s feminist classic, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai due Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Knowing about what happened to both mother and daughter postfilming casts a shadow over the documentary, especially when Chantal tells her mother, “I’m in a very, very good mood. . . . Let’s enjoy it; it’s not that common.” As the film nears its conclusion, there is almost total darkness, echoing the end of life. Through it all, Akerman is proud of her mother; reminiscing about kindergarten, she remembers, “And to everybody, I would say, this is my mother.” No Home Movie achieves that very same declaration, now for all the world to see and hear.
Agnès Varda takes an unusual approach to autobiography in The Beaches of Agnès
THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS (LES PLAGES D’AGNÈS) (Agnès Varda, 2008)
Friday, October 24, 2:00
Sunday, October 26, 11:00 am metrograph.com
“The whole idea of fragmentation appeals to me,” filmmaker, photographer, and installation artist Agnès Varda says in the middle of her unusual cinematic autobiography, the César-winning documentary The Beaches of Agnès. “It corresponds so naturally to questions of memory. Is it possible to reconstitute this personality, this person Jean Vilar, who was so exceptional?” She might have been referring to her friend, the French actor and theater director, but the exceptional Belgian-French Varda might as well have been referring to herself. Later she explains, “My memories swarm around me like confused flies. I hesitate to remember all that. I don’t want to.” Fortunately for viewers, Varda (Jacquot de Nantes, The Gleaners and I) does delve into her past in the film, sharing choice tidbits from throughout her life and career, in creative and offbeat ways that are charmingly self-effacing. Using cleverly arranged film clips, re-creations, photographs, and an array of frames and mirrors, the eighty-year-old Varda discusses such colleagues as Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, and Alain Resnais; shares personal details of her long relationship with Jacques Demy; visits her childhood home; rebuilds an old film set; speaks with her daughter, Rosalie Varda, and son, Mathieu Demy; talks about several of her classic films, including La Pointe Courte, Cléo from 5 to 7, and Vagabond; and, in her ever-present bangs, walks barefoot along beaches, fully aware that the camera is following her every move and reveling in it while also feigning occasional shyness. Filmmakers don’t generally write and direct documentaries about themselves, but unsurprisingly, the Nouvelle Vague legend and first woman to win an honorary Palme d’or makes The Beaches of Agnès about as artistic as it can get without becoming pretentious and laudatory.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Among Neighbors explores horrific events that linger in a small Polish town (courtesy of 8 Above)
AMONG NEIGHBORS (Yoav Potash, 2025)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Friday, October 10
212-255-2243 quadcinema.com www.amongneighbors.com
“It’s much easier to sell a pleasant history than a difficult history,” professor Dariusz Stola says in Yoav Potash’s remarkable documentary, Among Neighbors.
Ten years in the making, the film is a gripping, deeply emotional murder mystery surrounding the killing of Jews in the small town of Gniewoszów, Poland — months after WWII had concluded. In 2014, Potash was invited by Aaron Friedman Tartakovsky and his mother, Anita Friedman, to film the rededication of a Jewish cemetery in the shtetl where Anita’s father was from, but as Potash spoke with residents, he discovered long-buried, dark secrets involving violence and the whitewashing of what had occurred there.
Nine years earlier, the Friedman family had faced physical threats when they tried to visit the Gniewoszów firehouse, which was formerly the old synagogue. In 2018, the Polish government amended the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance, criminalizing any speech or action that suggested the country was complicit in the Holocaust. In 2020, Stola was forced to resign from his role at the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews over disagreements about what the institution could and could not display.
Potash, who wrote, directed, produced, and coedited the film and served as one of the cinematographers, meets with several longtime Polish residents, who will say only so much. Henryk and Sławomir Smolarczyk don’t feel there is anything strange about their collection of dusty Jewish tombstones from the destroyed cemetery. Janina Grzebalska recalls playing with Jewish children, attending Jewish weddings, and enjoying matzah. One unidentified woman who came to Gniewoszów for work in 1953 asks, “Is this about the Jewish issues? It was already silenced.”
But Potash starts uncovering the truth from Pelagia Radecka, who, for the first time, reveals the story of her relationship with the Weinbergs, the Jewish family who operated a fabric shop across the street from her house and were victims of a horrific tragedy. Haunted by her memories, Radecka has been trying to find out what happened to her friend, Janek Weinberg, for seventy years. Meanwhile, the granddaughters of Gniewoszów painter Harry Lieberman put Potash in touch with Yaacov Goldstein, who was separated from his family during the Holocaust and shares his unforgettable tale of survival. Pelagia’s and Yaacov’s harrowing stories are brought to life through archival footage, photographs, home movies, and spellbinding hand-drawn black, gray, and white animation (highlighted by powerful splashes of blue and yellow) as they narrate their experiences.
“They were our neighbors,” Pelagia says, shocked by what she had witnessed.
Yaacov declares, “I am a survivor of the Holocaust. And to say that Polish people didn’t help the Germans, did not hate, and didn’t kill Jewish people — it’s against the truth!”
Potash (Crime After Crime,Food Stamped) also speaks with matzevot photographer Łukasz Baksik and mass graves investigator Aleksander Schwarz, the latter noting, “We have so many cases, you wouldn’t believe.”; Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland; journalist Konstanty Gebert, who points out, “This one small town represents what happened in hundreds of small towns. The Germans come in, and it’s the end of normal relations between Jews and non-Jews.”; and historian Magda Teter, who puts it all into perspective, relating it to what is going on in America and around the world: “The assault on history and the criminalization of history in many countries today is part of a larger assault on democracy and democratic values.” Meanwhile, Polish ambassador Piotr Wilczek asserts, “There are only individual, very rare cases of antisemitism in Poland. The problem is really in many countries. So I really don’t know why Poland is singled out in such a way.”
In January 2024, Igor Golyak’s theatrical adaptation of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Our Class detailed the real-life 1941 pogrom in the small Polish village of Jedwabne, where Catholic children turned against their Jewish schoolmates, leading to a mass murder that was covered up for decades. In the 2021 documentary Three Minutes — A Lengthening, director Bianca Stigter does a deep dive into one hundred and eighty seconds of vacation footage taken in 1938 in the small town of Nasielsk, Poland, attempting to identify the people in the images and figure out what happened to them; of the three thousand Jews who lived in Nasielsk at the time, fewer than a hundred survived the Nazi invasion.
Meanwhile, antisemitism is on the rise yet again in America, where the current administration is erasing certain parts of our history and rewriting others, especially those concerning minorities and diversity. Immigrants are being vilified with grotesque language and shameful policies. Thus, Among Neighbors is not just about a small village in Poland; it is about respect, dignity, compassion, and the truth everywhere, at any time. When Yaacov says, “It was like we were not human beings,” it is hard not to think that he is referring to the treatment of Black and brown people in the United States. That point strikes a chord when Stola says, “They felt, in Poland, at home, that this is a safe place.”
Are there any safe places anymore?
Among Neighbors, which features an extraordinary ending that requires multiple tissues, runs October 10–16 at the Quad, with Potash participating in Q&As on October 10 at 7:20 (with filmmaker Yael Melamede), October 11 at 7:20 (with actor Simon Feil), and October 12 at 3:30 (with professor Annette Insdorf).
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
