10:00AM – 10:45AM
Coffee & Bagels
Complementary coffee & bagels sponsored by Starbucks and Jack’s Bistro Famous Bagels & Catering will be served in the Film Center lobby.
SHOWTIME: 11:00AM
Love, Statistically Speaking (drama)
Director Amichai Greenberg
2025 | 1hr 34m | Hebrew w/English subtitles
When Reuben, an 80-year-old actuary who lives by statistics, loses both his wife and her insurance money at the swimming pool, he’s forced into a reluctant partnership with his free-spirited granddaughter.
Their bumbling investigation among eccentric pool regulars turns into a funny, heartfelt journey proving that while you can calculate almost anything, you can’t predict love or family.
SHOWTIME: 2:15 PM
Talkback with director Marisa Fox, moderated by Abe Peck
My Underground Mother (documentary)
Director Marisa Fox
2025 | 1hr 28m + 30m talkback
“You think you know your mother until you don’t.” My Underground Mother follows filmmaker Marisa Fox as she uncovers the hidden past of her mother, Tamar — a woman who concealed a remarkable story of survival, resistance, and reinvention during and after World War II.
Through archival footage and intimate interviews, the film reveals a journey from Nazi forced labor camps to a life rebuilt in America, challenging what it means to define oneself beyond trauma.
Sponsors & Pass Holders Opening Reception Honoring Founder Barbara Greenleaf
5:00 – 6:00PM
Reception will be held at the Adam Bronfman JCC 524 Chapala Street
Mini deli themed gourmet appetizers, pickle martini, and live music!
All Movie Programs & Screenings are held at the Newly Renovated SBIFF Film Center ay 916 State St
SHOWTIME: 7:00 PM
Preceded with introduction honoring founder, Barbara Greenleaf
Lucky Star (dark comedy)
Director Pascal Elbé
2025 | introduction + 1hr 40m | French w/English subtitles
Follows Jean Chevalin, a bumbling trickster who accidentally deserts the army in 1940s France and must protect his family from the advancing Nazi threat while his misguided plan throws them into the heart of the Resistance.
SHOWTIME: 2:30PM
Preceded with short: Beshert. Talkback with Executive Producer, Adrian Salpeter.
The Darkest Light (documentary)
Director Simon Mendes
2026 | 20 min short + 1hr 18 min + talkback
What do you do when someone you love does terrible things?
The film explores the towering and deeply complicated legacy of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach — the “Singing Rabbi” — whose music transformed Jewish worship across denominations, and the painful reckoning that followed when numerous women publicly accused him of sexual abuse after his death in 1994.
At its center is his daughter, singer Neshama Carlebach, who grapples with her relationship with her father and prompts a larger question for her community: what do you do when someone revered as a holy teacher has also caused profound harm? Grounded in the voices of survivors and framed through the journey of a daughter struggling to reconcile the irreconcilable, the film examines memory, complicity and the human cost of silence.
Ultimately, it asks whether genuine healing begins not by choosing between light and darkness, but by having the courage to confront both.
SHOWTIME: 6:30PM
Preceded with short: From The Balcony. Talkback with Special Guests David Fishof and Brad Algood
The Bridge (documentary)
Producer & Director Kevin S. Bright
2026 | short + 1hr 10 min + talkback w/special guests David Fishof and Brad Algood
The Bridge follows these ten young Israeli survivors of the October 7th attacks as they travel from Israel to Los Angeles to attend the legendary Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp. Bearing the weight of unimaginable trauma, they find healing and resilience through music, mentored by icons from bands like Guns N’ Roses, Van Halen, and Black Sabbath.
What begins as a leap into the unknown becomes a once-in-a-lifetime journey where music is more than sound – it’s salvation.The film is produced by TV/Film Producer and Director Kevin S. Bright, the Emmy award-winning executive producer and director of the international hit series Friends and David Fishof, the founder and CEO of Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp.
SHOWTIME: 2:30PM
Preceded with short: See You Soon
Nuremberg 45 (drama)
Director Carsten Gutschmidt
2025 | 15min short + 1hr 30min | German w/English subtitles
Nuremberg, 1946: In Courtroom 600 of the Palace of Justice, Hermann Göring and twenty other Nazi war criminals stand trial. Among the journalists covering the proceedings is Ernst Michel, a 22-year-old Holocaust survivor. Driven by a desire for justice, he struggles with both himself and his reporting: his heart demands accountability, while his mind insists on objectivity.
During the trial, he meets Seweryna Szmaglewska, a Polish Auschwitz survivor who is scheduled to testify as a witness. As both grapple with their traumatic memories, Göring’s defense attorney makes Ernst Michel a disturbing offer: a personal meeting with the chief defendant.
Torn between a sense of duty, moral doubts, and haunting nightmares, Ernst Michel does not make his decision until the very last moment.
SHOWTIME: 6:30PM
For the Love of a Woman (feature)
Directors Guido Chiesa
2026 | 1hr 57min
Esther, an American woman, sets out on a journey to Israel in the late 1970s in search of her family’s origins and, piece by piece, reconstructs an extraordinary story.
SHOWTIME: 2:30PM
Book of Ruth (drama)
Director Esty Bitton Shushan
2025 | 1hr 30min
The unthinkable accidental death of their child ruptures the fragile balance of an ultra-Orthodox couple, thrusting them into a spiraling crisis of faith and selfhood. As the shock of the tragedy gives way to overwhelming grief, Ruth (Meshi Kleinstein) must grapple with a Haredi community whose expectations restrict her autonomy, while Shmuel (Aury Alby), consumed by guilt, seeks absolution through increasingly rigid devotion.
As their anguish exposes fractures long hidden beneath routine and ritual, each is pushed toward choices that draw them toward an ultimate test of marriage, belief, and the life they imagined. First-time director Esty Bitton Shushan—an advocate for ultra-Orthodox women—crafts an unflinching portrait of how loss reshapes identity, gender roles, and spiritual obligation.
SHOWTIME: 6:30PM
Talkback with director Duki Darwish Dror, moderated by Steve Zipperstein
UNraveling UNRWA (doc)
Director Duki Darwish Dror
2025 | 1hr 27min + 45min talkback
In the aftermath of the October 7 attacks and allegations of UNRWA staff involvement in kidnappings, the agency faced global fallout and Israel’s legislative move to sever ties amid Gaza’s deepening humanitarian crisis. Many donor nations temporarily suspended funding but later resumed support; the United States—the agency’s largest donor—has yet to reinstate its contributions.
The film traces UNRWA’s 75-year evolution, from its post-1948 origins as a temporary relief organization for Palestine refugees to its pivotal and often controversial role amidst the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It unravels new and surprising insights, offering an inside look at the only UN agency dedicated to a single group of people. With its three-year mandate expiring in December 2025, the UN General Assembly faces a crucial vote on whether to extend UNRWA’s mission.
SHOWTIME: 2:30PM
The Long Journey Home (documentary)
Director David Kahtan
2026 | 1hr 30min
Tracing its roots to the Babylonian exile, Iraq’s Jewish community—the world’s oldest—numbered 180,000 at its peak in the 1940s. By the 2000s, it had completely vanished. Culminating twenty years of research, The Long Journey Home is a landmark documentary uncovering this dramatic rise and tragic fall.
From the community’s Golden Age and the brutal WWII Farhud pogrom to the mass exodus, Israeli transit camps (Ma’abarot), and final dissolution in Baghdad, the film weaves rare archival footage with intimate interviews, including the director’s father. The result is a groundbreaking, emotional cinematic chronicle of displacement, identity, and memory.
SHOWTIME: 7:30PM
We Met at Grossinger’s (documentary)
Director Paula Eiselt
2026 | 1hr 44min
We Met at Grossinger’s is an immersive journey through the Jewish Catskills—once known as the Borscht Belt—reviving the iconic resort that inspired Dirty Dancing and defined an era of Jewish American life.
Throughout decades of prejudice stifling the integration of Jewish immigrants in America, the Borscht Belt in the Catskills provided an oasis of belonging, and Grossinger’s Resort and Hotel was the crown jewel. The real-life inspiration for the setting of the 1987 classic film Dirty Dancing, Grossinger’s provided both a physical and mental getaway where Jews—and others from marginalized communities—needing a break from NYC could relax.
The resort’s growing reputation attracted a wide variety of comedians, athletes, and political figures, including Mel Brooks, Jerry Seinfeld, Jackie Robinson and Eleanor Roosevelt. Award-winning filmmaker Paula Eiselt (Aftershock, 93Queen) resurrects this vanished world with an immersive warmth, providing a timely reminder of the historic richness of Jewish culture and its immeasurable contributions to American life.
SHOWTIME: 10:00AM
Preceded by short: The Lost Tapes – A Jew Grows in Brooklyn
Bella (drama)
Director Jamal Khalaily & Zohar Shachar
2025 | 15 min short + 1hr 15min | Hebrew w/English subtitles
When Yaki realizes who Bella is – a curly plumage, extremely valuable dove, and his sole inheritance – it is already too late. Yaki embarks with Bilal, his childhood friend, and their wives on a road trip between Israel and Palestine to bring Bella back.
They will try to pass through the checkpoints, ruin a wedding, steal the newlyweds’ car, participate in a reconciliation ceremony between families, and revive the unconscious dove… To arrive on time at a dove beauty pageant in Jerusalem
SHOWTIME: 2:30PM
Dust Bowls & Jewish Souls: Another Side of Woodie Guthrie (documentary)
Director Steven Pressman
2026 | 1hr 30min
Dust Bowls and Jewish Souls tells a rich and colorful story not only about Woody Guthrie, but about those who opened up a whole new Jewish world for him. The main focus of the film is on Woody’s close relationship with Aliza Greenblatt, who came to America as a young immigrant from Ukraine and who later gained fame as a prominent Yiddish poet and songwriter. Woody’s connection to Aliza grew out of his marriage to Aliza’s daughter Marjorie, who danced with the Martha Graham Company in the 1930s and later devoted herself to advancing her husband’s musical career and legacy.
SHOWTIME: 6:00 PM
Preceded by live original music tribute by Peter Melnick
The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue (documentary)
Director Barry Avrich
2025 | 15min musical performance + 1hr 35min
Grandfather and retired Israeli general Noam Tibon rescues his family from Hamas terrorists invading their home during the October 7, 2023 massacre – a coordinated assault on Israel sparking an ongoing conflict.
SHOWTIME: 10:00 AM
Oxygen (feature)
Director Netalie Burn
2024 | 1hr 35min | Hebrew w/English subtitles
Anat, a single mother and a devoted literature primary school teacher is impatiently waiting for her son’s discharge from the army. But exactly on the due date of his release, a soldier is being kidnapped and a new war breaks out. The condition of her shell-shocked father, Yakov, starts to deteriorate as Ido calls to say that all discharges have been put on hold.
The angst-ridden Anat tries to get him back home appealing to the kindness of the commanding officers. Ido returns, but her spirit is broken when she discovers that discharges were not suspended – it was he who volunteered to fight. Their symbiotic relationship goes downhill, Ido returns to the border post and the battle flares up. Before his unit enters Lebanon, Anat, who feels trapped between her father and her son, decides to take matters into her own hands.
SHOWTIME: 2:30 PM
Featuring special guest filmmakers for Three Brothers in Shanghai – Nicholas Andrus and Wallenberg talkback w/Carleen Hsu
Shorts Program:
Three Brothers in Shanghai
Directed by Nick Andrus
After fleeing Nazi Austria for Shanghai—one of the few havens for undocumented Jewish refugees—three brothers survive a perilous childhood, only to face a heartbreaking choice at the end of the war.
Malachi
Directed by Shabazz L. Graham
A young boy meets a mysterious stranger who might be able to record on his video camera the answer to his biggest question: what does God look like?
GUYGU
Directed by Jordan Barr & Chen Heifetz
A short animated documentary about Guy Gilboa Dalal, who was kidnapped from the Nova party and is being held as a hostage by Hamas.
Marriage is a Mitzvah
Wallenberg
Directed by John Valdez
A 93 year old professor recounts how he and nearly 100,000 Jews were saved by Raoul Wallenberg, who was once a student at the University he had taught at for 50 years. Years later, a group of professors and local activists, created the Wallenberg Medal and Lecture to honor people who have similar qualities to those of Raoul Wallenberg and to learn from them.
1hr 35min total
SHOWTIME: 5:00 PM
Talkback with special guests Amy Wendel, Jill Levinson, & Allison Chase Coleman
Relatively Normal (comedy)
Director Amy Wendel
2025 | 1hr 40min + 25min talkback
SHOWTIME: 7:30 PM
Preceded with sort: Stigidish
Ilana Goor – A Woman Against the Wind (Documentary)
Director Tomer Heymann
2025 | 1hr + 23min short | Hebrew w/English subtitles
Ilana Goor has always played by her own rules. A bold and successful artist who made a fortune from her art-a fact that stirred skepticism and left her feeling like an outsider in the Israeli art world. Following personal trauma and public criticism, Goor established her own museum – a home for her creations and collections. Now, at the age of 88, after all she has achieved and built, the future of Ilana Goor’s museum and life’s work hangs in the balance.