The Donald M. Ephraim Sun & Stars International Film Festival offers a dynamic selection of eight films with Jewish themes making their West Palm Beach premieres. The festival will screen 25 films from February 27-March 5 at the Rinker Playhouse at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts and March 8-11 at the Paragon Theaters at Delray Marketplace.
Rabbi Tamar Manasseh, the first woman ordained under the auspices of the International Israelite Board of Rabbis, will be on hand for a Q & A session with director Brad Rothschild after the screening about her work, “Rabbi on the Block,” on Sunday, March 3.
Courtesy of MorseLife
Shaina Silver-Baird stars in the film, “Less Than Kosher.” Courtesy of MorseLifeA Black Jew, Rabbi Manasseh has one foot firmly in each of these two communities, as she strives to overcome decades of fear, misunderstanding and lack of communication. “Rabbi on the Block” documents her activism against gun violence and her non-stop initiatives to offer social services on the streets of Chicago’s South and West sides. Seen in the course of welcoming all to events at her makeshift headquarters on a vacant lot, questions about the authenticity of her Jewish identity posed by traditionalists become null in the face of the good works of Judaism in action.
As the Festival’s Centerpiece, Shaina Silver-Baird performs in conjunction with the screening of “Less Than Kosher” on March 5, winner of Best Film at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. An actor, musician, producer, writer and songwriter based in Toronto, Silver-Baird stars in this rollicking music-filled comedy as Viv, a 30-year-old wild child who launches a singing career from her family’s synagogue when she reluctantly accepts a job as its cantor. From failed chanteuse to the Judeo-pop princess in the blink of an eye, she is a sensation, and the rabbi’s married son isn’t the only one noticing.
Also at the Kravis Center is “Martha Liebermann: A Stolen Life” (Feb. 28), a tense and intrigue-filled drama from Germany of the renowned artist’s widow and heir to his exceedingly valuable collection that makes her the target of Nazi greed.
From Hungary comes “All About The Levkoviches” (Feb. 29), a bittersweet comedy about a dysfunctional family facing the aftermath of its matriarch’s death that poignantly underlines the issues at stake – death, family separation, generational conflict and reconciliation.
“The Goldman Case” (March 2), a French film, comes directly from its screening as the Critics Fortnight opening night film at the 2023 Cannes International Film Festival. Dynamic performances are forefront in this measured yet incendiary procedural in which Pierre Goldman, a French Jewish left-wing activist, is charged with robbery and a double murder.
The Italian film “Kidnapped: The Abduction Of Edgardo Mortara” (March 4), which premiered at Cannes this year, uses sumptuous period settings to recreate 1858 Italy when Pope Pius IX ordered the seizure of Edgardo Mortara, the six-year-old son of a middle class Jewish family after a maid claimed to have secretly baptized him as an infant.
Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ralph Arlyck explores his Jewish heritage and rambles the New England country roads near his farm, asking life’s big questions of his friends and neighbors in “I Like It Here” (March 4).
After its move to Delray, the Festival screens “The Shadow of the Day from Italy” (March 8). The year is 1938; an apolitical café owner and WWI veteran finds that the war on Jews has unavoidably come to him when he falls in love with a newly hired stranger who is not exactly who she seems.
For the full list of participating theaters and scheduled movies for The Donald M. Ephraim Sun & Stars International Film Festival, and to purchase individual tickets and memberships, call (561) 220-6735 or visit sasiff.org
