2026 JEWISH FILM SERIES
JULY 13 - AMONG NEIGHBOURS
Directed by award-winning filmmaker Yoav Potash this powerful documentary plays like a real-life murder mystery, excavating buried truths of violence, complicity, and silence. In the small Polish town of Gniewoszów, the erased history of neighbors bound by ties of love and betrayal are brought to life through stunning animation enriched with touches of magical realism.
- Winner of Best Documentary at the Los Angeles Film Awards (March 2025)
- Special Award Winner at the Warsaw Jewish Film Festival
JULY 19 - OXYGEN
Natalie Braun’s anti-war film offers a poetic and politically urgent exploration of maternal refusal. An eerily prescient work, OXYGEN follows a mother’s radical act of resistance as she attempts to stop her son from crossing the border into war. At a moment when the human cost of military conflict is being debated globally, this mother and son, Anat and Ido, wrestle with their relationship and their understanding of patriotism, obligation, family and freedom.
- Winner of the Haggiag Award for Best Picture at the 2025 Jerusalem Film Festival
JULY 29 - THE SEA
Director Shai Carmeli Pollak tells the story of a boy from a Palestinian village in the occupied west bank who sets out to see the sea for the first time, not knowing the language or the way. When his father, Ribhi, an undocumented laborer working in Israel, learns that his son is missing, he leaves his job in search for him—risking arrest and the loss of his livelihood.
- Winner of 5 Ophir Awards (Israel's Academy Awards) including Best Picture of the Year.
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AUGUST 3 - I HAVE SINNED (AL KHET)
Released in 1936, I Have Sinned (Al Khet) was the first Yiddish sound film made in Poland, and marks the film debut of the Polish-Jewish comedy team Dzigan and Schumacher ( known as the Yiddish Abbot and Costello). Unseen for generations until its new rescue and restoration by The National Center for Jewish Film, IHave Sinned (Al Khet) blends melodrama with a bissel of comedy and music.
Set in a small Jewish town during World War I, the film follows Esther (Rachel Holzer), a rabbi’s daughter who abandons her child after her lover dies in battle and the Russians invade. Complications unfold as Esther’s friends played by Dzigan and Schumacher attempt to reunite mother and daughter years later.
- "No film paints a more detailed picture of life in 1930's interwar Yiddishland. The rich Polish Yiddish is delicious. As a snapshot of mid-1930's Polish Jewry, it's extraordinary" . The Forward
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AUGUST 9 - ART SPIEGELMAN: DISASTER IS MY MUSE
Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse (2024) examines Spiegelman's "irreverent" life, his artistic partnership with wife Françoise Mouly, and the development of his groundbreaking graphic novel Maus. Premiering at DOC NYC 2024, the film covers his underground comix roots, New Yorker covers, and 9/11 experiences as he emerges as a leading advocate for free speech in response to book bans and rising authoritarianism.
- Peabody Award Nominee