Thursday, May

MID-ATLANTIC PREMIERE Narrative

ALEGRÍA

Dir. Violeta Salama | 119 min | Spain | 2021 Spanish w/English subtitles

After years away, Alegría (Cecilia Suárez, Nora’s Will) returns to her hometown of Melilla, where three strands of Mediterranean culture converge: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim. Ostensibly back for a Sephardic wedding, Alegría uses the moment to navigate her complex relationship with Judaism, her friendships with women of other faiths, and a reunion with an estranged daughter.

A bright comedy about multiculturalism, Violeta Salama’s film is also a coming to terms with her personal experience (her father is Sephardic and her mother Catholic) and a luminous portrait of Melilla.

Saturday, May 14, 6:00 PM – EDCJCC

Wednesday, May 18, 6:10 PM – Bethesda Row Cinema Monday, May 16, 7:15 PM – Bethesda Row Cinema

Sunday, May 22, 6:50 PM – AFI Silver Theatre

DC PREMIERE Narrative

BERENSHTEIN

Dir. Roman Shumunov | 110 min | Israel | 2021 German, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian w/English subtitles

A long-forgotten hero’s story is unearthed in this riveting and lavishly produced docudrama.

The last surviving member of the Jewish Red Army partisans, Ukrainian Leonid Berenshtein was a decorated anti-Nazi fighter who sabotaged German train transports and tracked down Hitler’s secret V-2 doomsday missile facility.

Evocatively employing flashbacks and stirring reenactments, Berenshtein recounts battlefield atrocities, lost love, and fateful choices. Most profoundly, the aging partisan gives voice to his fateful decision to refuse orders and break into a German prison to release Jews sentenced to death.

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE Documentary

A BREATH OF LIFE

Dir. Matteo Botrugno, Daniele Coluccini | 95 min Italy, Germany | 2021 Italian w/English subtitles

Lucy is a tough, spirited, and wryly funny 95-year-old woman. In her apartment, yellowed photos capture Lucy’s adolescence as she’s about to experience the worst period of her life. Lucy is the oldest transgender woman in Italy. She is among the few survivors of Dachau concentration camp.

Lucy’s story is the grand narrative of the 1900s; she is a living witness to the 20th century and its dark shadows. Her youth, transition, motherhood, and trials as a sex worker are singular, but her dogged indomitability characterizes all Shoah survivors. DC PREMIERE Narrative

CHARLOTTE

Dir. Eric Warin, Tahir Rana | 92 min Canada, France, Belgium | 2021

Growing up in Berlin in the 1930s, Charlotte Salomon (voiced by Keira Knightley) had already demonstrated her artistic promise and antiauthoritarian leanings by the time she turned 16. The Nazis’ rise to power forced the Jewish girl to be expelled from the art academy where she studied, and in 1938, she fled to France.

This stunning animated drama brings to life Salomon’s true story, as she faces down private turmoil and sweeping global cataclysm to create a masterpiece—the sprawling expressionist work Life? or Theatre?—which is revered in the art world to this day.

Sunday, May 15, 6:45 PM – Bethesda Row Cinema Sunday, May 15, 7:00 PM – Bethesda Row Cinema