Preview by Brad Balfour
New York Jewish Film Festival
January 15 – 29, 2025
Film at Lincoln Center – Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street
New York, NY 10023
The Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center collaborate once again this January for the annual New York Jewish Film Festival (NYJFF). Running from January 15th through the 29th at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater (165 West 65th Street), the festival features documentary, narrative, and short films from around the world that explore the Jewish experience.
The Opening Film of the festival, “Midas Man,” is an empathetic biopic of Brian Epstein, the Jewish and gay music lover and visionary who discovered and then managed the Beatles in the 1960s before his tragic death at age 32. The seismic impact of the Beatles on popular culture continues to reverberate 60 years after they took “The Ed Sullivan Show” by storm in February 1964. That revelatory TV appearance never would have taken place — and the band may never have been discovered — if not for Epstein.
Directed by Joe Stephenson and written by Brigit Grant, the film features a deeply moving Jacob Fortune-Lloyd (“The Queen’s Gambit”) as Epstein, with a cast that includes Jonah Lees as John Lennon, Blake Richardson as Paul McCartney, Emily Watson and Eddie Marsan as Epstein’s parents, and Jay Leno as Ed Sullivan.
In the Centerpiece film, “Of Dogs and Men,” filmmaker Dani Rosenberg dives headfirst into the psychological horrors of our contemporary world with this experiential account of a teenager named Dar (Ori Avinoam), who returns home to her kibbutz searching for her missing dog in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 attacks in Israel, filmed in late October 2023. “Of Dogs and Men” takes a humanist approach to the ongoing conflict, reckoning with both the horrifying losses within her Jewish community and the imminent tragic violence of retribution in Gaza.
The closing night film, “Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round,” is a timely and uplifting evocation of cooperative political protest. Ilana Trachtman’s documentary recalls a crucial 1960 chapter in the civil rights movement when protesting Black students were joined by Jewish locals as they perched defiantly on a merry-go-round in Maryland’s segregated Glen Echo Amusement Park.
“Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round” reminds viewers of the importance of collaboration and humility in the face of injustice and features a voice-over cast that includes Mandy Patinkin, Jeffrey Wright, and Dominique Thorne, among others.
Along with its slate of almost two dozen features, documentaries, and shorts, the NYJFF also has special classic screenings. The 1975 period drama, “Hester Street,” directed by Joan Micklin Silver, will have a 50th anniversary screening of a new restoration. The film recreates Jewish immigrant life on New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of the century, and features Carol Kane in an Oscar-nominated performance. The 1922 silent feature “Breaking Home Ties” a film once believed lost, will be shown with a new digital restoration by the National Center for Jewish Film, and is now presented with a newly recorded score performed by Grammy Award-winning musicians.
To learn more, go to: https://www.filmlinc.org/festivals/new-york-jewish-film-festival/