A Great Beginning: 2022 Miami Jewish Film Festival

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The good news: Miami Jewish Film Festival films will be available to stream for free starting Friday, January 14 until Wednesday, January 26. These films are free! You can donate if you like; it helps.

The bad news: There are so many films to watch, you may have to play hooky because timewise, it gets a little tricky. After content becomes available January 14th at 3:00 pm GMT+1, you’ll have 72 hours to start watching. Once you begin, you’ll have 48 hours to finish watching. So you’ve got to plan your route and binge.

The Miami Jewish Film Festival (MJFF) will be a hybrid of virtual and live programming events with a record breaking 148 films in selection, and all virtual screenings accessible, again, for free. For its milestone 25th edition, which runs from January 13-27, the festival will screen 108 feature and 40 short films representing 25 countries, including 11 world premieres, 22 international premieres, 18 North American premieres, and 11 US premieres. The lineup holds 22 first-time feature filmmakers and an unprecedented 54 films directed by women (37 percent of total program).

This organization has done things exceedingly well for years. There are obviously a number of people involved, but the buck stops with Igor Shteyrenberg, Executive Director. The films are well curated, communication is prompt, promotional materials always look and sound great, and the snafus which plague Miami’s other film festivals are mostly absent because of Igor’s leadership.

This festival’s excellence revolves around its vastness; there are local films, there are historical films, there are documentaries, there are Israeli films, there are German films, there are female films, there are LGBTQ films, there are comedies, there are tragedies, there are thrillers, there are award winners, there are talkies, there is silent film, there are Latin-Jewish films, there are diversity inclusion films, there are GenZ films, and on and on. I watched nearly twenty five trailers.

In The Conductor, McArthur Award winning Marin Alsop is inspired by Leonard Bernstein and shatters a glass ceiling. Bernstein’s Wall examines the composer himself. “Made in Florida” movies show four films receiving their world premieres including Sylvie of the Sunshine State, which was entirely made during the COVID-19 lockdown and looks like a lot of Miami neighborhoods with its mangos and curbless streets. MJFF has expanded its Ibero-American section this year with a fascinating documentary Xueta Island about the legacy of the Chuetas (descendants of Mallorca’s Inquisition-era Jewish population), as well as an award-winning Brazilian documentary Leaving Paradise. Several films appear in the festival’s Next Wave Competition, which is juried by 21-35-year-old college students and young professionals. For the first time, the festival will present noteworthy international series’, among them the mouthwatering Israeli show The Chef from the producers of Fauda and Shtisel, and the limited series The New Jew hosted by one of Israel’s most popular comedians and TV personalities Guri Alfi.

The opening night will be iMordecai, a heart-warming comedy that is a love letter to the city of Miami and closing night is the Holocaust drama Persian Lessons. Both opening and closing nights will take place at the historic North Beach Bandshell’s open-air amphitheater in Miami Beach.

More information is available at miamijewishfilmfestival.org or by calling 305-573-7304.