The transformative and transcendent power of Jewish cinema is alive and well, as evidenced by the upcoming 38th annual William and Irene Weinberg Family Baltimore Jewish Film Festival.
The film festival will return to the Gordon Center for Performing Arts, at 3506 Gwynnbrook Avenue in Owings Mills, on Tuesday, Apr. 14. at 7 p.m. All of the films were curated by the William and Irene Weinberg Family Baltimore Jewish Film Festival Committee.
The first film to be screened will be “The Ring,” a 2024 Israeli comedy/drama about a family grappling with the memory and trauma of the Holocaust.
“The Gordon Center is thrilled to host the 38th annual William and Irene Family Baltimore Jewish Festival, celebrating the diversity of the Jewish experience this year, including the acclaimed film ‘The Ring’ on Yom HaShoah [Holocaust Remembrance Day], which is a profound statement on the power of memory,” said Sara Shalva, chief arts officer of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore. “This film captures the essence of what the Baltimore Jewish Film Festival strives to do: bridge generations through storytelling.
“While it stands as a shining example of the best of Israeli arts and culture, it also represents the incredible diversity of our lineup — bringing international narratives to Baltimore that honor our past while speaking boldly to our future,” Shalva said.
The festival will also feature the 2024 Israeli drama “Soda,” starring “Fauda” lead actor and co-creator Lior Raz. The film, which will be shown on Thursday, May 28, at 7 p.m., is set in the 1950s and chronicles a romance between a former partisan fighter and a woman accused of being a kapo at Auschwitz.
The 2025 American rom-com “31 Candles” will be screened on Sunday, June 28, at 7 p.m.. The semi-autobiographical film, starring writer/director Jonah Feingold, is about a New Yorker who decides to have a bar mitzvah after reconnecting with his high school crush.
The final entry of the festival will be “The Blond Boy from the Casbah,” a 2023 nostalgic drama based on director Alexandre Arcady’s memoir, “Le Petit Blond de la Casbah.” The French-made film, to be presented on Tuesday, July 28, at 7 p.m., is about a celebrated French filmmaker who returns to his native Algiers with his young son and reconnects with his roots in a neighborhood of Jews, Muslims, and Christians.
For information, visit gordoncenter.com/program/baltimore-jewish-film-festival/.
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