J. The Jewish News of Northern California is a sponsor of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
Chances are you don’t go to the movies very often.
What was once America’s go-to weekend afternoon or date-night entertainment has fallen on relatively hard times. Though this summer’s box office is off to a good start, the film exhibition business still hasn’t entirely recovered from its pandemic collapse. In fact, just half of all Americans visited a movie theater in 2025.
It’s easy to see why: There are nearly infinite movies to watch at home, many for free. Meanwhile, two people can easily spend $50 on tickets — and God forbid you want to shell out for popcorn and a soda too. So why go to the theater?
The organizers of the Jewish Film Institute, whose 46th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival will run July 16 to Aug. 2, acknowledge the challenge they face.
Still, they offer plenty of reasons for spending your time and money on their event.
Festival director Ash Cook uses a food metaphor to explain its value.
“Yeah, you can go out and find snacks,” he said. “You can eat whatever, you know, sort of junk food.”
Or you can eat conscientiously.
“If you want to know where your [movie] has come from, be able to get in contact with its makers, be able to understand it in a more deep and contextual way, a festival is one of the best ways to do that,” he said. “It’s a little bit more nutritious, filling meal.”
The attendees of this year’s SFJFF will eat well. This year’s festival features 65 films from 17 countries. That includes eight world premieres, a record for the festival.
There will be community events such as a Shabbat gathering, a “Next Wave” party for young adults and an award for Rachel Bloom of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” fame.
A festival like SFJFF also creates links to community and artists.
“You’re supporting a local arts organization and the filmmakers directly, instead of [the streaming] platforms,” Cook said. “So, yeah, there’s a premium, but there’s also a much richer experience, both as an audience member getting to hear from the director, getting to be in person with other people, but also getting to support an organization who’s dedicated to keeping this part of the industry sustainable and alive.”
Indeed, many SFJFF screenings will be followed by live Q&As with the filmmakers.
The community seems to be getting the message. Attendance hasn’t fully returned to pre-pandemic numbers. But 2025 saw an increase of 20% over the previous year, according to JFI director of development and communications Nate Gellman.
“Early sales for this year’s Festival indicate that audience enthusiasm continues to grow, with a highly anticipated return to the newly renovated Castro Theatre,” he said in an email.
That’s right. This year’s festival will finally see SFJFF’s step back into its longtime home, the restored Castro, for a day of screenings of locally produced films.
Other venues in San Francisco include opening night at the ornate Herbst Theatre and a weekend of “Next Wave” films from younger directors at the Roxie Theater. In a significant change for the festival, most screenings will take place in the newly renovated auditorium in the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. The overhaul of the 438-seat Kanbar Hall was guided by JFI and optimized for film screenings. After the San Francisco portion wraps up, the festival will continue for a week at the Piedmont Theatre in Oakland.
JFI executive director Lexi Leban is excited about the opportunity for more community interaction at the JCCSF screenings. The center’s large lobby will allow people to linger, discuss the films they’ve just seen, catch up with friends and even grab a nosh.
“You drink some wine. You have a bagel. There will be physical space for that in the JCC,” Leban said.
She offered “I Don’t Know What I’m Doing Here” as an example. Following the world premiere at JCCSF of this film about a young woman on a quest for her ancestral village in Romania, the film fest will host a gathering in the lobby to welcome Shabbat.
The film fest remains one of the largest annual Jewish events — if not the largest — in Northern California. Founded in 1980, SFJFF is also the longest-running Jewish film festival in the world and still one of the biggest. The Jewish Film Institute, which runs the festival, is an ambassador for Jewish film at major film festivals around the world. SFJFF is a qualifying festival for the Oscar documentary short competition, and Cook, the festival director, is also a programmer at the Sundance Film Festival.
“We are still considered the mother of all Jewish film festivals,” Leban said. “And many other [Jewish film fests] look to us as a guide for their programming decisions because they don’t have a professional curatorial staff and they’re not an independent film and media organization.”
‘Big night’ films
As always, the festival will be organized around several “big night” and “spotlight” films that organizers are particularly jazzed about.
Opening night at the Herbst in San Francisco and closing night at the Piedmont in Oakland present two very different films. Opening night is the French-Israeli narrative film “Tell Me Everything,” which premiered at Sundance in January.
It relays the story of a 12-year-old boy growing up in Tel Aviv at the height of the AIDS epidemic as he learns that his father is in a relationship with a man. It is directed by Moshe Rosenthal, whose previous film, “Karaoke,” was the opening-night film in 2022.
Closing night will be the documentary “We Met at Grossingers,” which tells the history of the famed resort in upstate New York, a Catskills vacation paradise for generations of East Coast Jews.
This year’s “take action spotlight,” which recognizes a film with a social justice message, is the documentary “Hollywood Does Abortion,” which chronicles the history of abortion on screen and how Hollywood depictions of abortion stories have shaped and been shaped by current events. The film is particularly timely in a post-Roe world.
One of many familiar faces featured in the film is Bloom, the actor and comedian most famous for the sitcom “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” in which she played the title character. She’ll receive SFJFF’s annual Freedom of Expression Award in recognition of her career and her involvement in “Hollywood Does Abortion.” (The film and award ceremony on July 18 will be followed by a screening of the 1982 teen movie classic “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” which includes a memorable abortion storyline.)
Each year, the festival designates a “centerpiece narrative” and “centerpiece documentary.” This year’s are examples of two types of film that often crop up at Jewish film festivals, told in new ways.
The centerpiece narrative “Where To?” is the latest in a long line of films that interrogate the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians. It tells the story of an Israeli living in Berlin and his repeated late-night encounters with a Palestinian Uber driver. The centerpiece documentary is a meta-commentary on the Holocaust film genre: “Holofiction” is a wordless piece that uses images from many narrative Holocaust films to explore the ways in which such films have shaped our memory of the Holocaust itself.
Local films
A number of films at the festival have local ties. In addition to a block of local short films, there is a film produced by a frequent J. contributor, a fresh look at Woody Guthrie’s Jewish connections and a documentary reckoning with the mixed legacy of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.
“The Lonely Child,” co-written and produced by J. contributing editor and food columnist Alix Wall, is a documentary about “The Lonely Child,” a heartbreaking Yiddish lullaby written during the Holocaust, inspired by Wall’s mother, who was a “hidden child.” The film is almost a decade in the making and is directed by Marc Smolowitz of San Francisco.
The Guthrie film, “Dust Bowls and Jewish Souls: Another Side of Woody Guthrie,” uncovers the folk songwriter’s interest in Jewish culture, which sprang from his interactions with his mother-in-law, the Yiddish poet and lyricist Aliza Greenblatt. The film is directed by Steven Pressman, who lives in San Francisco.
And there’s “The Darkest Light,” about the fallout from revelations that the generational Jewish musical talent of Carlebach had a darker side. Since his death in 1994, Carlebach has been repeatedly and credibly accused of sexual assault. In the film, his daughter and survivors work to come to grips with his life and deeds. “Darkest Light” has local ties: It was funded in part by a JFI completion grant, which helped get the film over the finish line. More importantly, much of Carlebach’s career was spent in San Francisco, and survivors of his abuse are thick on the ground in the Bay Area. (Full disclosure: I was interviewed for this film because I have written about Carlebach, but I didn’t make the final cut.)
Israel-Palestinian conflict
SFJFF has never shied away from presenting a range of cinematic perspectives on Israel, Palestine and Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This year is no different, even as Israeli artists and cultural figures, including filmmakers, are ostracized by much of the international arts community.
Most recently, filmmaker Nadav Lapid, whose new film “Yes” is highly critical of Israeli society, was removed from the jury of an international film festival in France. He eventually withdrew from the festival altogether under pressure from other filmmakers. (Lapid isn’t part of this summer’s SFJFF, though “Yes” screened at JFI’s WinterFest earlier in the year.)
“There’s a lot happening in the whole independent film world. Every week there’s a new petition on many different sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Leban said. “But I think, in general, JFI is really supporting Israeli film, the Israeli filmmakers and the Israeli film industry, at least standing behind the filmmakers that we programmed in our festival.”
Including “Tell Me Everything” and “Where To?,” there are 16 films from Israel in this year’s festival. Some are serious, engaging with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as “The Day After,” a documentary about a group of Israelis who travel to Northern Ireland to learn about coexistence from survivors of the Troubles, or with war in the drama “Oxygen.” (“The Day After” is a work in progress, so the audience will have a chance to provide feedback following the screening.)
Others provide a lighter look at Israeli society. For that, look to “The Wedding Entertainer (or The Tale of Moishe Badhan),” a Haredi comedy, or “Cuz You’re Ugly,” a comedy about a woman who has recently returned home from IDF service and is determined to lose her virginity.
So why should you spend your time and money at SFJFF this summer?
For one thing, you can’t watch most of these films at home — even long after the festival. Plus, you get to hear from writers, directors and others behind the films. But it’s as much about simply connecting with other human beings as anything else, director of programming Dominique Oneil said.
“One of the benefits of going out to the theaters is that you’re in a community of people, in a safe, open environment to have dialogue. And you just can’t always get that element online,” they said.
“Going to the movies, even though you’re in a dark room, the lights go down, and it feels individual — at our particular festival, I think we really offer the opportunity in which to have these conversations in a place where we can feel challenged but comfortable and safe.”