Every week, Kristopher Pollard from Milwaukee Film and Radio Milwaukee’s Dori Zori talk about movies — because that’s what you do when you’re Cinebuds.
With more than a quarter-century of momentum behind it, the Milwaukee Jewish Film Festival is well past the point of being an established tradition in our area. Its 28th edition rolls out Oct. 26-30, which means it’s about that time for another not-quite-as-established tradition: a visit from Julie Lookatch of the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center!
The organization’s chief communications officer earns that title on this episode by helping guide us through the highlights of this year’s festival, which returns to Marcus North Shore Cinema with a five-film lineup screening nightly at 7 p.m. There’s also the option to stream four of the films Nov. 3-9, but if you’re able, the in-person experience is really the way to go — in large part because of the extras that come with it.
For all five of this year’s movies, you can stick around after the credits for a talkback featuring a variety of special guests, including our very own Jon Adler for the Oct. 26 showing of Midas Man. You’ll also get the chance to connect with representatives from the Nathan & Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center, community experts and educators, and the director and producer of The Stamp Thief following that film’s screening Oct. 29.
Tickets are $12 in advance via the links in the schedule below, or you can pick them up at the door for $14. For more information, visit the Milwaukee Jewish Film Festival website.
Milwaukee Jewish Film Festival schedule
All screenings are at 7 p.m. at the Marcus North Shore Cinema.
Oct. 26: Midas Man
When Brian Epstein set foot in the Cavern Club in November 1961 to watch The Beatles perform, he saw something no one else could: a glimmer of gold. Sharply dressed and well-spoken, Brian was hardly the most obvious radical. But being Jewish and closeted, and having grown up as an outsider who had failed at pretty much everything, he was a 26-year old with something to prove and a willingness to tear up the rulebook.
Oct. 27: The Ring
Based on Adir Miller's Holocaust survival story, this heartwarming dramedy is about three generations and the family history that reconnects them. Arnon Noble is a religious man with a strong bond to his mother, a Holocaust survivor. He usually drives her to school lectures, where she tells the students how she saved the lives of her baby boy and herself with the help of a thin gold ring. When the mother's health deteriorates, he travels to her old hometown of Budapest to search for the mythological ring that saved her life in the past.
Oct. 28: Soda
A beautiful seamstress moves to a neighborhood of Holocaust survivors in 1956. Rumors about her past as a Kapo shake up the neighborhood and especially Shalom, the leader and a former brave resistance fighter, who is torn between his passion for the beautiful woman and his commitment to the community to reveal her past. Community tensions rise over her true identity.
Oct. 29: The Stamp Thief
The Stamp Thief is an immersive cat-and-mouse journey that solves a crime decades old. Seinfeld producer Gary Gilbert seeks to recover stamps stolen from victims of the Holocaust by a rogue Nazi officer, setting off on a real-life mission that’s part detective story, part heist film and a small but powerful act of historical reckoning.
Oct. 30: Matchmaking 2
After breaking box-office records with their first film (shown at the 2023 Milwaukee Jewish Film Festival), the characters from Matchmaking return with this endearing romantic comedy set against Ashkenazi and Sepharic cultural tensions. Moti Bernstein meets girls in the Jewish orthodox community as he searches for a wife but falls for the one girl he can never have. Against everything he knows and every value he holds dear, Moti must go out on a limb in the most unexpected ways.
