Schedule :

January 27, 2024

6:00pm : Opening Night Gala: Remembering Gene Wilder - Montvale Event Center

The Opening Night Gala of Spokane Jewish Film Festival 2024 will include heavy apps and dessert from FEAST World Kitchen and a silent auction with many fantastic items and experiences to bid on. Help us celebrate the festival's 20th anniversary in style!

Confirmed silent auction items so far include:

Overnight stay for two at the Davenport Grand Hotel

Watercolor paintings by local artists Kary Peters and Mari Anne Figgins

Two tickets to the Spokane Symphony at the Fox Theater, plus pre-concert master class with conductor James Lowe

Jewelry from a fabulous local artisan (an original piece)

Gift card for Gonzaga University apparel from GU's Zag Shop

Generous gift card from Italia Trattoria

Remembering Gene Wilder

The world knows Gene Wilder as an endearing comic genius, but his gifts also included writing and directing. This new documentary includes interviews, clips, and outtakes from Wilder's career, as well as excerpts from his memoir read by the man himself.

Director : Ron Frank

Runtime : 92 minutes

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January 28, 2024

2:00 PM : March '68 - Wolff Auditorium at the Jepson Center

Two young students, Hania and Janek, meet and fall in love in the midst of social turmoil and Jewish discrimination in 1960s Warsaw.

While the young lovers are uninterested in politics, they find themselves unable to avoid it when Hania's father and mother lose their jobs due to the antisemitic purge and are forced to emigrate.

Hania does not want to leave Janek, and the couple soon participate in a protest rally at the university where they discover freedom comes at a high price.

Runtime : 117 minutes

Director : Krzysztof Lang

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February 3, 2024

7:00 PM  : Demon Box and My Neighbor Adolf - Wolff Auditorium at the Jepson Center

After festival rejections, a director revises his intensely personal short film about trauma, suicide, and the Holocaust and transforms it into a painful, blunt, and funny dissection of the film and his life. Please be advised that this film deals with themes of trauma and suicide.

Runtime: 14 minutes

Director: Sean Wainsteim

My Neighbor Adolf- Wolff Auditorium at the Jepson Center

Colombia, May 1960, just after Israel's abduction of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. Polsky, a lonely and grumpy Holocaust survivor, lives in the remote Colombian countryside. He spends his days playing chess and tending his beloved rose bushes. One day, when a mysterious old German man moves in next-door, he suspects that his new neighbor is... Adolf Hitler. Since nobody believes him, he embarks on a detective mission to find the evidence. But, in order 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.

Runtime: 96 minutes

Director: Leon Prudovsky

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February 4, 2024

2:00 PM : Eight Nights, A Jew Walks Into a Bar & Less Than - KosherWolff Auditorium at the Jepson Center

After years as a struggling actor, Daniel was cast to play a part in Conan O'Brien's "human-centipede-menorah." His bizarre experience evolved from one of shame into a deepening connection with his personal heritage, a reckoning with the choices he'd made, and ultimately a desire to tell the story of Eight Nights. This is a film about our deep connection to the people we love.

Runtime: 6 minutes

Director: Daniel Gamburg, Benjamin Goldman

A Jew Walks Into a Bar - KosherWolff Auditorium at the Jepson Center

David Finklestein is an ultra-Orthodox Jew who belongs to a secluded Brooklyn sect. He’s also a talented, aspiring stand-up comedian who finds comedy an essential outlet for his crippling anxiety. When David is offered a career-making show that falls on the Sabbath, he must finally make a choice between the life he wants and the life he’s always known.

Runtime: 24 minutes

Director: Jonathan Miller

Less Than Kosher - KosherWolff Auditorium at the Jepson Center

At 20, Viv was a promising young singer. At 30, her failing music career has forced her back into her mother's basement. But when this self-proclaimed Bad Jew lands ***-backwards in a job as a cantor at her family's synagogue, she's thrown into a wild ride of illicit affairs, drug trips, tense family drama, self-discovery, and some serious Jewish bops. It's Shiva Baby meets A Star is Born, with modern Jewish wit and Hebrew electro-pop.

Director: Daniel AM Rosenberg

Runtime: 65 minutes

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4:00 PM  : Q&A with "Less Than Kosher" co-creator/star Shaina Silver-Baird and director Daniel AM Rosenberg - Wolff Auditorium at the Jepson Center

Shaina Silver-Baird and Daniel AM Rosenberg, the co-creator/star and director of Less Than Kosher (respectively), will join us via Zoom for a Q&A following our screening of the film.

Since completing her BFA in Theatre Performance at York University, Shaina Silver-Baird has been working across Canada as an actor and singer/songwriter. Favorite roles include Juliet (Romeo & Juliet – Citadel Theatre), Marcy (Go Fish film – Best Feature MIFF) and Toba in Chasse Galerie (Soulpepper/Storefront Theatre), for which she was recently nominated for a 2017 MyTheatre Award for Outstanding Performance in a Musical and was part of the original, Dora Award-winning ensemble. She is also the lead singer and songwriter for folk band Crooked House Road and pop project Ghost Caravan, which is signed to The Confidence Emperors Label.

Daniel AM Rosenberg is an accomplished storyteller with a wealth of experience creating engaging, humorous, and touching works as a writer and director. He co-created and directed the CBC Gem comedy series The Ninth (12 series awards and nominations) and developed and directed the comedy series Cam_Girlfriend (20+ series awards and nominations). Daniel has directed scripted and unscripted programming airing on CBC, A+E Networks, FYI,HGTV, MTV, Much Music, and AMI. He recently directed segments for AMI’s new documentary series Postcards from… and season 2 of Cam_Girlfriend. Daniel was a finalist in the 2023 Just For Laughs CBC Comedy Pitch program. He got his start directing music videos, where he won an iHeartRadio MMVA for Rock Video of The Year, as well as a JUNO nomination for Video of The Year.

Virtual

January 28, 2024 - January 31, 2024

7:00 PM : March '68

Two young students, Hania and Janek, meet and fall in love in the midst of social turmoil and Jewish discrimination in 1960s Warsaw. While the young lovers are uninterested in politics, they find themselves unable to avoid it when Hania's father and mother lose their jobs due to the antisemitic purge and are forced to emigrate. Hania does not want to leave Janek, and the couple soon participate in a protest rally at the university where they discover freedom comes at a high price.

Director: Krzysztof Lang

Runtime: 117 minutes

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7:00 PM : Matchmaking

Israel’s biggest box-office hit of 2023, Matchmaking is a good-hearted romantic comedy that gives a light Orthodox twist to Romeo and Juliet. When Moti Bernstein, a handsome Ashkenazi Jew from a “good family” in Israel, reaches the right age, he begins to hear that he is the ultimate match. However, Moti wants someone he can never have.

Director: Erez Tadmor

Runtime: 96 minutes

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January 29, 2024 - February 1, 2024

7:00 PM : Letter to a Pig

A traumatic memory from Holocaust survivor takes a young schoolgirl on an inner journey.

Director: Tal Kantor

Runtime: 17 minutes

Reckonings

Could the perpetrators face their crimes? Could any compensation deliver justice to the survivors? Under the threat of violence, six years after the

Holocaust, a group of German and Jewish leaders pushed for reparations as a step towards healing.

Director: Roberta Grossman

Runtime: 84 minutes

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January 30, 2024 - February 2, 2024

7:00 PM : Stay With Us

Gad Elmaleh decides to leave New York and move back to Paris, to get baptized and become a Catholic. Despite his attempt to hide the truth from his Jewish family, Gad's parents discover their son's unconditional love for the Virgin Mary – and for them, it’s a nightmare! Determined to bring Gad back to reason and to his Jewishness, they turn his conversion into a battlefield, as Gad tries to make them understand by any means necessary that his sincere beliefs do not change his identity and the love he has for his family.

Director: Gad Elmaleh

Runtime: 93 minutes

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January 31, 2024 - February 3, 2024

7:00 PM : Where Is Anne Frank

The film follows the journey of Kitty, the imaginary friend to whom Anne Frank dedicated her diary. A fiery teenager, Kitty wakes up in the near future in Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam and embarks on a journey to find Anne, who she believes is still alive, in today's Europe. While the young girl is shocked by the modern world, she also comes across Anne's legacy.

Director: Ari Folman

Runtime: 99 minutes

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February 3, 2024 - February 6, 2024

7:00 PM : Magic Men

Magic Men is the story of a 78-year-old Greek man and his Hasidic rapper son, who have been estranged for many years. They embark together on a road trip from Israel to Greece searching for an old magician who saved the father's life during World War II. The journey leads them to absurd encounters and ultimately brings them to a final confrontation.

Director: Erez Tadmor, Guy Nattiv

Runtime: 100 minutes

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February 4, 2024

2:00 PM : The Unorthodox

The year is 1983 and Yaakov Cohen, the owner of a Jerusalem printing press, is tired of being pushed around. It seems that he was born on the wrong side, with the wrong family name.

In a moment's decision he decides to establish a Sephardic, ultra-Orthodox party that will participate in the upcoming Jerusalem elections. He gathers two friends, and together they improvise a campaign -- no means, no connections, no money, but a whole lotta rage and passion, and a sense of justice.

Runtime: 92 minutes

Director: Eliran Malka

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2:00 PM : West Bank Story and A Borrowed Identity

A musical comedy set in the fast-paced, fast-food world of competing falafel stands in the West Bank... David, an Israeli soldier, falls in love with the beautiful Palestinian cashier, Fatima, despite the animosity between their families' dueling restaurants. Can the couple's love withstand a 2,000-year-old conflict and their families' desire to control the future of the chickpea in the Middle East?

Runtime: 21 minutes

Director: Ari Sandel

A Borrowed Identity

A Palestinian-Israeli boy named Eyad is sent to a prestigious boarding school in Jerusalem, where he struggles with issues of language, culture, and identity.

Director: Eran Riklis

Runtime: 104 minutes

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7:00 PM : Eight Nights, A Jew Walks Into a Bar & Less Than - KosherWolff Auditorium at the Jepson Center

After years as a struggling actor, Daniel was cast to play a part in Conan O'Brien's "human-centipede-menorah." His bizarre experience evolved from one of shame into a deepening connection with his personal heritage, a reckoning with the choices he'd made, and ultimately a desire to tell the story of Eight Nights. This is a film about our deep connection to the people we love.

Runtime: 6 minutes

Director: Daniel Gamburg, Benjamin Goldman

A Jew Walks Into a Bar - KosherWolff Auditorium at the Jepson Center

David Finklestein is an ultra-Orthodox Jew who belongs to a secluded Brooklyn sect. He’s also a talented, aspiring stand-up comedian who finds comedy an essential outlet for his crippling anxiety. When David is offered a career-making show that falls on the Sabbath, he must finally make a choice between the life he wants and the life he’s always known.

Runtime: 24 minutes

Director: Jonathan Miller

Less Than Kosher - KosherWolff Auditorium at the Jepson Center

At 20, Viv was a promising young singer. At 30, her failing music career has forced her back into her mother's basement. But when this self-proclaimed Bad Jew lands ***-backwards in a job as a cantor at her family's synagogue, she's thrown into a wild ride of illicit affairs, drug trips, tense family drama, self-discovery, and some serious Jewish bops. It's Shiva Baby meets A Star is Born, with modern Jewish wit and Hebrew electro-pop.

Director: Daniel AM Rosenberg

Runtime: 65 minutes

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February 5, 2024

7:00pm : Zero Motivation

Filmmaker Talya Lavie steps into the spotlight with a dark comedy about everyday life for a unit of young female Israeli soldiers.

The human resources office at a remote desert base serves as the setting for this cast of characters, who bide their time pushing paper, battling for the top score in Minesweeper, and counting down the minutes until they can return to civilian life.

Amidst their boredom and clashing personalities, issues of commitment—from friendship to love and country—are handled with humor and sharp-edged wit.

Runtime: 97 minutes

Director: Talya Lavie

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Date : January 27, 2024 - February 5, 2024

Location : Various Location

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