Festival at a Glance
March 15 - 26, 2026
Sunday, March 15
3pm For the Living 7pm Nuremberg
Tuesday, March 17
3pm Eli Wiesel: Soul on Fire 7pm Frontier
Thursday, March 19
3pm The Tasters 7pm Vindicta
Sunday, March 22
3pm The Pianist’s Choice 7pm The Ring
Tuesday, March 24
3pm Ethan Bloom 7pm Once Upon My Mother
Thursday, March 26
3pm Love, Statistically Speaking 7pm Eleanor the Great
Wednesday, March 18 7pm Vindicta
Stories Are Better When We Share Them.
There’s something especially powerful about coming together this year. For six days, the St. Louis Jewish Film Festival invites you into stories that ask us to bear witness, choose courage, laugh through loss, and find connection in unexpected places. From intimate comedies and coming-of-age tales to gripping dramas and unforgettable true stories, this year’s films reflect the full spectrum of Jewish life—and the shared humanity that binds us all.
This year, we’re thrilled to expand the festival with an additional screening of Vindicta at The Alamo Drafthouse at The Foundry (March 18 at 7pm). By taking the Festival on the road, we’re opening the doors wider and inviting more people —especially students, young adults, and Midtown neighbors — to discover the power of Jewish storytelling on the big screen.
A film festival isn’t just about the titles in our lineup. It’s about who’s sitting next to you. It’s about the conversations that happen afterward, the moments that linger, and the memories you carry home. Whether you join us for one screening or all of them, we hope you feel welcomed, challenged, entertained, and inspired.
So, turn off the TV. Come sit in the dark with friends, family, and fellow movie lovers. Let’s laugh together, reflect together, and experience the power of cinema the way it was meant to be shared.
We can’t wait to see you at the movies.
John Wilson Senior Director, Cultural Arts
Tickets and Details
Enjoy all 12 films with an All-Festival Pass $102.69
All-Festival Pass holders must RSVP for each film they wish to attend due to theatre capacity. (fees included)
$17.30 (fees included)
Three ways to purchase tickets
Your ticket to a deeper festival experience
This year, we invite you to do more than watch the films — travel with them. Our brand-new Jewish Film Festival Passport transforms the Festival into an interactive journey. Designed to look and feel like a real passport, it’s your personal companion for all six days of stories, ideas, laughter, and reflection. Now, every film Is a stop along the way!
Inside, you’ll find:
• An official identification page to make it uniquely yours
• A dedicated page for each film, featuring the title, screening time, and space to record your thoughts
• Prompts to capture favorite moments, unforgettable characters, who you saw the film with, and whether you’d recommend it
All-Festival Pass holders receive a Festival Passport FREE. Individual passports are available for $10.
2026 St. Louis Jewish Film Festival Committee
2026 St. Louis Jewish Film Festival Committee
Festival Chair: Sue Koritz
Film Screeners: Julie Frankel, Michael Isserman, Sue Koritz, Helen Stolar
Film Selection: Marsha Birenbaum, Julie Frankel, Debbie Gilula, Kent Hirschfelder, Michael Isserman, Sue Koritz, Jerry Kreisman, Merle Oberman, Judy Plocker, Sissy Price, Patsy Spector, Penny Stein, Helen Stolar
Cultural Arts Staff
Senior Director, Cultural Arts: John Wilson
Chief Jewish Engagement Officer: Rabbi Brad Horwitz
Box Office and Guest Services Coordinator: Alex Gilbert
Film Talkbacks
Please join us after the following films for group discussions!
For the Living Lisa Effress Executive Producer
For the Living Tim Roper Writer & Co-Director
Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire Erin McGlothlin
Gloria M. Goldstein Professor of Holocaust Studies, Washington University in St. Louis
From Remembrance to Reckoning
Sunday, March 15 | 3pm
For the Living
From USA • In English
Directors: Marc Bennet, Tim Roper
Documentary: 112 minutes
The 31st Annual St. Louis Jewish Film Festival opens with a powerful meditation on dehumanization — and the urgent need to restore our shared humanity.
When 250 cyclists embark on a profound journey, retracing the liberation route of a Holocaust survivor from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Kraków, Poland, their ride becomes more than an act of remembrance. It becomes a living response to hatred, one that transforms memory into empathy and action at a time of rising global antisemitism.
For The Living is an epic and deeply moving true story that challenges us to ask: When will we stop building monuments only for the dead and begin rehumanizing the living? When will we finally say “Never Again” — and truly mean it?
From Remembrance to Reckoning
Sunday, March 15 | 7pm
Nuremberg
From USA • In English
Director: James Vanderbilt
Feature: 148 minutes
Powerful, gripping, and intellectually provocative, Nuremberg brings the world’s most infamous war crimes trial into sharp psychological focus.
Starring Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, and Michael Shannon, the film follows a U.S. Army psychiatrist tasked with evaluating Nazi leaders before they stand trial. As he becomes increasingly entangled with Hermann Göring, the line between observer and participant begins to blur, forcing him — and the audience — to confront unsettling questions about the nature of evil, accountability, and justice.
Tense and morally complex, Nuremberg asks whether true reckoning is possible when the perpetrators of history’s greatest crimes refuse to see themselves as monsters.
Bearing Witness, Choosing Courage
Tuesday, March 17 | 3pm
Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire
From USA • In English
Director: Oren Rudavsky
Documentary: 87 minutes
Eighty years after his liberation from Buchenwald, Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire seeks to understand the man behind one of the most searing and widely read memoirs of the Holocaust.
Told largely through Wiesel’s own words and unmistakable voice, the film penetrates the heart of both the known and lesser-known Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) — his passions, his doubts, his moral conflicts, and his lifelong insistence on bearing witness. Drawing on rare archival materials, original interviews, and striking hand-painted animation, the film illuminates Wiesel’s journey as a survivor, writer, teacher, and public conscience.
Bearing Witness, Choosing Courage
Tuesday, March 17 | 7pm
Frontier
From Spain • In Spanish with English subtitles
Director: Judith Collell
Feature: 97 minutes
Set in 1943, Frontier tells the true story of a Spanish customs officer who quietly helps Jewish refugees escape Nazi-occupied France — one life at a time. As his solitary acts of defiance grow into an underground rescue effort, he and his wife are forced to confront the lingering trauma of the Spanish Civil War and the very real danger posed by Nazi patrols along the border. Every choice carries risk, and silence itself becomes a moral decision. Fretful, humane, and deeply moving, Frontier honors the courage of ordinary people who, in a moment of history’s greatest darkness, chose to act — knowing the cost, and acting anyway.
Women Under the Reich
Thursday, March 19 | 3pm
The Tasters
From Italy • In German with English subtitles
Director: Silvio Soldini
Feature: 118 minutes
Inspired by a shocking true story, The Tasters is a chilling portrait of survival inside Hitler’s inner circle. In the autumn of 1943, Rosa, a young woman fleeing bombed Berlin, is forced into a terrifying role: along with other women from a remote village near the Wolf’s Lair, she must taste the Führer’s meals each day — never knowing if the food is poisoned. Caught between starvation and the constant threat of death, the women form fragile bonds marked by fear, rivalry, and desperate loyalty. Claustrophobic and quietly devastating, The Tasters exposes the psychological toll of living under absolute terror, where survival demands silence, complicity, and unbearable choices — and where even the most private emotions become acts of risk.
Women Under the Reich
Thursday, March 19 | 7pm
Vindicta
From USA • In English
Director: Dominik Sedlar
Feature: 120 minutes
After witnessing the murder of her parents, a young Jewish woman is forced into hiding — and into a life defined by rage. What begins as survival hardens into a relentless pursuit of vengeance, as she uses intimacy and deception to hunt those responsible for the destruction of her family. Each encounter blurs the line between power and peril, justice and obsession. Inspired by true accounts of women who resisted the Nazi regime, Vindicta is an edgy and morally unsettling portrait of trauma, desire, and fury — asking whether revenge can ever heal what hatred has already destroyed.
Second screening option: March 18 at 7pm The Alama Drafthouse at The Foundry
Love, Legacy & Moral Choice
Sunday, March 22 | 3pm
The Pianist’s
Choice
From France • In French/German with English subtitles
Director: Jacques Otmezguine
Feature: 102 minutes
“During the war, music becomes the last hope.”
François Touraine is a gifted young pianist whose life is forever changed by his relationship with Rachel, his older Jewish piano teacher. When the Nazis take control of Paris, love and music collide with terror, forcing François into an impossible moral dilemma: whether to use his talent to perform for the occupiers in a desperate attempt to save the woman he loves. Tender, tragic, and deeply resonant, The Pianist’s Choice explores the cost of survival when art is entangled with power — and asks what remains of music, love, and conscience after the war has passed.
Love, Legacy & Moral Choice
Sunday, March 22 | 7pm
The Ring
From Israel • In Hebrew with English subtitles
Directors: Adir Miller, Doron Paz, Yoav Paz
Feature: 117 minutes
What begins as a simple, almost casual discovery quickly becomes something far more profound. In this acclaimed Israeli drama (with humor!), a single object—a ring—unlocks a buried family story, forcing its present-day owner to confront questions of memory, inheritance, and moral responsibility.
Starring beloved Israeli actor Adir Miller, The Ring moves fluidly between past and present, exploring how the legacy of the Holocaust continues to shape lives generations later. As long-held truths surface, the film asks what we owe to the past—and to each other—when history suddenly becomes personal.
Family, Faith & Finding Yourself
Tuesday, March 24 | 3pm
Ethan Bloom
From USA • In English
Director: Herschel Faber
Feature: 95 minutes
After an unforgettable appearance at our 2025 Jewish Book Festival & Speaker Series, Joshua Malina returns to St. Louis, this time on the big screen. In the charming coming-of-age comedy Ethan Bloom, Malina plays a well-meaning but increasingly bewildered father whose teenage son is preparing for his Bar Mitzvah… while secretly taking confirmation classes at the local Catholic church. What follows is a heartfelt and hilarious collision of faith, family expectations, and adolescent identity. Filled with teenage angst, puppy love, and genuine warmth, Ethan Bloom is a joyful reminder that growing up — and finding yourself — is rarely a straight line.
Family, Faith & Finding Yourself
Tuesday, March 24 | 7pm
Once Upon My Mother
From France • In French with English subtitles
Director: Ken Scott
Feature: 102 minutes
Based on the memoir by Roland Perez, Once Upon My Mother is a joyful, life-affirming true story about determination, resilience, and unconditional love. The film begins in 1963, when Esther gives birth to Roland, born with a clubfoot that doctors insist will prevent him from ever walking normally Refusing to accept that fate, Esther promises her son that he will walk, thrive, and live an extraordinary life — and then sets out to make it come true. Spanning decades and filled with humor, heart, and hard-won miracles, Once Upon My Mother is a moving celebration of a mother’s unwavering belief in her child — and the extraordinary power of love to shape a life.
Love, Loss & Connection
Thursday, March 26 | 3pm
Love, Statistically Speaking
From Israel • In Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Amichai Greenberg
Feature: 90 minutes
When Reuben, an 80-year-old actuary who believes life can be neatly measured and managed, suddenly loses both his wife and her insurance money at the local swimming pool, his carefully ordered world is thrown into chaos. Reluctantly teaming up with his free-spirited granddaughter, Reuben launches a clumsy investigation that turns every eccentric pool regular into a prime suspect. What begins as a comic whodunit slowly becomes something deeper, as suspicion gives way to connection and shared grief opens the door to an unexpected bond. Warm, witty, and quietly touching, Love, Statistically Speaking reminds us that while numbers can explain a lot, the most important things — love, family, and second chances — will always defy calculation.
Love, Loss & Connection
Thursday, March 26 | 7pm
Eleanor the Great
From USA • In English
Director: Scarlett Johansson
Feature: 98 minutes
The perfect festival farewell, Eleanor the Great marks Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut. After a devastating loss, Eleanor Morgenstein, 94, leaves Florida for New York City, where a chance friendship with a young student pulls her back into the world - and into a story she tells that begins to take on a life of its own. As humor and grief intertwine, Eleanor is forced to confront memory, truth, and the complicated ways we carry the past. Wry, tender, and laugh-out-loud funny, Eleanor the Great is a deeply human film about friendship, aging, and survival — one that leaves you smiling, misty-eyed, and wonderfully unsure whether your tears come from laughter or recognition.
