CLOSING NIGHT: HAUTE COUTURE

Directed by Sylvie Ohayon

Narrative Feature

France | 2021 | 100 min

French with English subtitles

OPENING NIGHT OPENING NIGHT

Directed by Krzysztof Lang

Narrative Feature

Poland | 2022 | 117 min

Polish with English subtitles

PHILADELPHIA

1968. Warsaw, Poland. Hania, a happy-go-lucky, aspiring actress, typically avoids the increasingly discriminatory rhetoric from her country’s government. The same goes for the charming Janek, a tech student. After meeting at a play one night, the two are instantly smitten with each other. Hania’s evasion of her country’s politics, however, changes when her father, a secretly Jewish man, is targeted by the government for his Zionist beliefs. The government’s increasingly antisemitic ideology puts her father, as well as Hania and her mother, at risk of deportation. Can the lovers circumvent their situation and live the rest of their lives together?

Esther is the renowned head seamstress at Dior on Avenue Montaigne and on the road to retirement. One day, she is mugged in the subway by Jade, a young woman from a lowerclass banlieue of Paris. When Jade’s friends warn her that it’s bad luck to steal religious items from someone, she makes the daring choice to return the belongings to the dressmaker. Instead of calling the police, Esther, though ill-tempered towards her mugger, sees talent in Jade and does the unexpected by offering her an internship at her atelier. Regardless of their differences in class, the two women form a trustful, poignant friendship, one that allows them to release their emotional scars and pain.

SATURDAY, APRIL 1

7:30 PM at Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History