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JewishResilienceFilmand MediaSeries
April24-28,2025
WeitzmanNationalMuseumofAmericanJewishHistory
Every year, PJFM receives hundreds of cinematic and digital works of art from across the globe. Some are funny. Some are tragic. Some are based on real events. Some are purely fictional. There is one theme, however, so prevalent in these stories: the theme of Jewish resilience. In these stories, the Jews represented are strong-willed. They are courageous. They face adversity but don’t capitulate. They get back up on their feet. They are threatened and victimized, but they survive. In light of the terror Jews across the world continue to face, we need these stories more than ever, stories that celebrate the tenacity of the Jewish people.
I have worked at PJFM for nine years now, and I continue to be truly astounded by the ever-growing stories of Jewish resilience. The movies you will experience in PJFM’s Jewish Resilience Film and Media Seriesits first ever - remind us of the power of the human spirit. Prepare to be moved!
From everyone at PJFM, a huge thank you to our Presenting Sponsors, Elaine Lindy and the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History. Thank you to our Board of Directors and sponsors and supporters. Thank you to our Screening Committee who previews hundreds of films year-round for the organization. Learn more about this fantastic lineup in this month’s Haven issue, and don’t forget to check out these films from April 24-28, at The Weitzman. Enjoy the show!
Matt Bussy Program Director, PJFM
JewishResilienceFilmand MediaSeries
April24-28,2025
WeitzmanNationalMuseumofAmericanJewishHistory
THE STRONGHOLD THE STRONGHOLD Opening Night Opening
Night
Thursday, April 24
7 PM at Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History
PJFM kicks off the series with the premiere of THE STRONGHOLD, copresented with the Israeli Film Festival of Philadelphia. Michael Aloni (SHTISEL) and Daniel Gad (THE NEW BLACK) star in this heart-pounding thriller about a group of Israeli soldiers facing a sudden Egyptian onslaught during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. With their lives on the line, a young lieutenant and an army doctor must make an agonizing decision: make a desperate final stand or take a risky chance that could betray everything they believe in.
Director Lior Chefetz encourages viewers to approach the film with sensitivity.
“I hope THE STRONGHOLD will remind people that we’re all brothers and sisters with shared faith,” he says. “Fighting shoulder-to-shoulder, where the differences are not that big, and that we should be listening to each other and debating.”
JewishResilienceFilmand MediaSeries
April24-28,2025
A GREAT BIG SECRET A GREAT BIG SECRET
Award-winning filmmaker Yoav Potash (CRIME AFTER CRIME) returns with a short yet powerful documentary about Dutch-born Holocaust survivor Anita Magnus Frank. With a mix of archival footage and hand-drawn animation, Potash’s film explores Frank’s life when she was forced into hiding at the age of six during Hitler’s reign. For Frank, the film is a vital reminder for how the world can so easily become compliant in the face of hatred.
“People are blindly willing to follow lies and propagate the superiority of some and the inferiority of others,” she mentions in the film. “That’s why you cannot forget.”
PJFM presents its third digital exhibition live at the museum. All visitors, including those visiting the museum, can stop by The Weitzman and check out Netanel Kafka’s hypnotic film for free during three days of the series.
SOME.BODY, which blends original AI animation, spoken word, and trance music, is adapted from an award-winning short story, “Trigger (Liquid Sky)”, by Dr. Nir Soffer-Dudek, a clinical psychologist, and follows a young woman and survivor of the Nova music festival massacre. Kafka, who has always been interested in researching “post-trauma” through different media forms, emphasizes how inner strength can outweigh the lingering side effects of trauma and pain. Like the tagline for the film states: The music never stops. It’s just not outside anymore.
JewishResilienceFilmand MediaSeries
April24-28,2025
WeitzmanNationalMuseumofAmericanJewishHistory
TTHEODOR HEODOR
Friday, April 25 Friday, April 25
SCAN FOR TICKETS
PJFM is showing a musical! From acclaimed theater director Ido Ricklin, THEODOR is a live taping of his opera that has been experienced by thousands of people since its debut at the Israeli Opera Hall. With a score composed by Yonatan Cnaan, this breathtaking work delves into the life of the visionary himself behind the modern State of Israel, Theodor Herzl.
For Ricklin, making an original opera is a little like Burning Man, believe it or not.
“Three years of work, writing and composing, a month and a half of rehearsals, and then the meeting with the audience, the enthusiasm, the excitement, the applause,” he says. “Two more performances are added, and the halls are full, and two more definitely final performances…and that’s it. It ends.”
The hard work certainly pays off in THEODOR, now in a cinematic form that has moved Ricklin beyond words.
“I find myself truly moved to tears,” he says after watching the completed version. “Not only the overwhelming music, but also the ability to suddenly see the singers up close, the tear in the corner of the eye, the smallest nuance.”
April24-28,2025
WeitzmanNationalMuseumofAmericanJewishHistory
999: THE FORGOTTEN GIRLS 999: THE FORGOTTEN GIRLS
SCAN FOR TICKETS
Streaming on Sunday, April 27 (12 AM ET)Monday, April 28 (11:59 PM ET)
After a year-long hiatus, PJFM’s streaming platform, PJFM On Demand, is finally back. For viewers in the Greater Philadelphia Region, 999: THE FORGOTTEN GIRLS can be streamed for two consecutive days during the series from their own home. With a wider window frame, this allows more time for viewers to experience this remarkable documentary
Director Heather Dune Macadam adapts her own best-selling book into a feature-length movie (also her directional debut) that explores the true story of a small group of Slovak Jewish women who survived against all odds after being deported to Auschwitz in March 1942 999 has been screened at Jewish film festivals across the globe for the past few years now, and the momentum hasn’t stopped. Viewers continue to be enthralled by Macadam’s dedication to preserving female survivor stories of the Shoah.
“When humanity descends into barbarity, women are the first to suffer violence, slavery and disappear without a trace,” she says. “Finding the lost girls of the Holocaust has been my mission for the past twelve years.”
For Macadam, one doesn’t need to be Jewish to take action in preserving these types of stories.
“I am not Jewish and while this is a Jewish story, I came to this story as a woman,” she adds. “As a human being,”
JewishResilienceFilmand MediaSeries
April24-28,2025
ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE
Filmed with remarkably careful attention to detail and style, NEW LIVES is a gorgeous rumination on love, trauma, and moving forward after enduring such unspeakable pain. In this narrative short, Manusha (Veronika Vozniak), a young Polish Holocaust survivor, struggles to assimilate in 1950s Brooklyn while forced to come to terms with her past.
NEW LIVES was the thesis film of director Joey Schweitzer while he was a student at NYU His grandparents, who died in the 90s and whom he never met, were also survivors
“What always struck was never my grandparents’ experiences in the camps Painful, terrible, awful,” he says “What’s never really documented was the story that took place after liberation ”
For Schweitzer, Manusha is a metaphor for his way of handling his past and the past of his grandparents
“There is never an easy answer,” he says. “There will be no quick solution, but if we put in the effort, if we strive to honor the past while wanting to move forward, we can begin to heal.”
Blake Peters was a player on the 2023 Princeton University basketball team who led the Tigers to a memorable Sweet 16 that same year. He was also the only Jewish player on the team, and after October 7 later that year, campus antisemitism threatened his status.
At just five minutes long, Nate Berman’s short manages to capture the fear and worry of so many Jewish college students continuing to face hostility on a day-to-day basis It’s stunning to believe that Berman himself completed the film when he was only 17 years old. A major movie buff, he made ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE as a project for a production class he took at Hopewell Valley Central High School in New Jersey.
NEW LIVES NEW LIVES
Jewish Resilience Film and Media Series
April 24-28, 2025
Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History
THE COMMUNITY THE COMMUNITY
SCAN FOR TICKETS
Sunday, April 27 Sunday, April 27
4 PM at Weitzman National Museum of
4 PM at Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History American Jewish History
Alex Osmolovsky used to work as a director and producer in Ukraine, a place he called his home. When Russia’s full-scale invasion forced him to leave, he watched from afar as accusations of Nazism against Ukrainians were discussed left and right in the media. Baffled by these claims, he packed up his film equipment and trekked back to his country with the goal of witnessing first-hand the state of the Jewish community.
“I chose to return on Purim, a holiday meant to be one of the happiest in Jewish tradition,” Osmolovsky says. “Marking a powerful beginning to this journey.”
What results is THE COMMUNITY, a documentary that captures the indefatigable resilience of Ukrainian Jews in the shadow of this invasion. Osmolovsky worked on the project for two years, culminating in a heavy yet deeply impactful motion picture that celebrates the fortitude of modern-day Ukrainian Jews.
“Ukraine remains an irreplaceable home,” he adds. “Even in these darkest times.”
Jewish Resilience Film and Media Series
April 24-28, 2025
Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History
Co-sponsoredby
TTORN ORN
Sunday, April 27 Sunday, April 27
6 PM at Weitzman National Museum 6 PM at Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History of American Jewish History
SCAN FOR TICKETS
The world watched in dismay as protesters tore down ‘KIDNAPPED’ posters across New York City of the 240 hostages captured by Hamas on October 7, 2023. The tearing of the posters, those images of the kidnapped, transgressed into a symbol of the conflict between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian activists, turning The City That Never Sleeps into a battleground of fear, anger, and hatred.
“The conflict in the Middle East was no longer distant,” says Nim Shapira, the director of TORN “It was brought home, raw and unfiltered.”
For Shapira, the goal of his film was never to just present one side of this conflict but encourage dialogue amongst everyone involved in this “ paper war.” TORN calls for healing as a global community, fostering conversations and truths.
“In a world increasingly divided by ideology, my hope is that this film will act as both a mirror and a catalyst,” says Shapira. “Reflecting the fractures in our society while inspiring a collective desire to bridge them ”
Shapira joins PJFM, including other individuals from the documentary, for a discussion proceeding the film.
April24-28,2025
WeitzmanNationalMuseumofAmericanJewishHistory
FOUR WINTERS FOUR WINTERS
Opening Night Opening Night
SCAN FOR TICKETS
Monday, April 28 Monday, April 28
7 PM at Weitzman National Museum
7 PM at Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History of American Jewish History
The series ends with Julia Mintz’s exhilarating FOUR WINTERS, a festival hit across the world. This documentary details the true story of the over 25,000 Jewish partisans of WWII who banded together and fought against the Nazi regime deep in the woods of Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and Belarus. Many of these resistance fighters were only in their teens and torn from their families before becoming the partisan soldiers they are now remembered for The last surviving partisans recount their past in the film, sharing remarkable stories of survival and their unified belief in the power of resistance
“No person should succumb to brutality without putting up resistance,” says Shalom Yoran, a Jewish partisan interviewed in the film “Individually, it can save one’s life En masse, it can change the course of history ”
For Mintz, what drew her to the story of the Jewish partisans was one childhood question she always asked herself: why didn’t the Jews fight back?
“What I discovered, through the survivors’ searing memories, were riveting stories of courageous and inspiring resistance,” she says “A chapter in our collective history about the Jewish Partisans that needed to be told ”
Scholars similarly agree that in Holocaust education, the stories of Nazi extermination can outweigh the ones of Jewish resistance.
“Far too often and for too long, the story of Jews who resisted the Nazis has been lost within the larger re-telling of the history of the Nazi’s efforts to exterminate European Jews,” says Alexander B. Rossino, a historian from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Later generations deserve to know this history [of the Jewish partisans].”
Mintz will join PJFM proceeding the film for a discussion.
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