Previewing the 2026 Philadelphia Jewish Film and Media Festival

This is also the first year Beth Becker, PJFM’s program manager, is heading up the festival's programming.

The festival kicks off at the Weitzman on Thursday, November 12, with the opening-night film Once Upon My Mother, which is a Philadelphia premiere. Directed by Ken Scott and based on a book by Roland Perez, the French-Canadian feature tells the decades-spanning story of a Moroccan Jewish family, in which a boy is born with a clubbed foot.

“It's just about [his mother’s] determination throughout his life to make sure he has the life that she wishes for him and his whole family,” Becker said. “It's funny and heartwarming, and it's just a great film, and it’s getting awards all over.”

Intimate stories

On Saturday, November 14, at the Philadelphia Clef Club, the festival presents the Philadelphia premiere of Bookends, from director Mike Doyle. The feature stars Noam Ash, who wrote the film, as Nate, a young man who must leave his life in the city to move in with his grandparents (F. Murray Abraham and Caroline Aaron) in a retirement community. Director Doyle and star Ash will appear for a Q&A, moderated by local film critic Gary Kramer of the Philadelphia Gay News. An encore of Bookends will show at Reel Cinemas Narberth on November 15 at 4 p.m.

“It's about love, friendship, intergenerational connections,” Becker said. She added that it has been “sweeping LGBTQ festivals,” winning awards at the OUT at the Movies International Film Festival and the Grove & Pines Film Festival.

"Variety of perspectives"

Like most Jewish film festivals these days, PJFM’s festival had to contend with the fraught subject of Israel and Palestine.

One treatment is the short film Children No More: Were and Are Gone, from the filmmaker Hilla Medalia. Nominated for an Academy Award this year in the Documentary Short category, Children No More follows a group of activists in Tel Aviv who demonstrated weekly against the war in Gaza, often to angry responses. Another is In Protest, which follows a group of women protesting for women’s rights in Israel. Both are part of the Israeli Shorts program, which will show at the Weitzman at noon on November 13.

Another look at the subject is Am I Cancelled Yet?, a documentary about the controversial actor/comedian Michael Rapaport, and the pushback he got when he started speaking up in favor of Israel after the October 7 attacks. The film shows at 7 p.m. on November 15th, with Rapaport in attendance for a talkback.

“It came to us, and we were, we watched it, and we were fascinated,” Becker said of the Rapaport film. “It's very intimate.”

How did PJFM and the committee approach the often fraught topic?

“Our mandate, our mission is to tell the story of the Jewish experience through film,” Becker said. “So we really try to show a wide variety of perspectives, while still staying within the Weitzman’s core values.” She pointed to the inclusion of both the Rapaport film and Children No More, which followed protests for the children killed in Gaza by the Israeli military.

“We're really trying to show they're all Jews, and they all have a perspective,” Becker said. And trying to understand each other's perspectives is how we are going to move forward and be stronger as a community, if we can see each other's humanity.”

Scenes of culture and history

The festival features three short programs: The Israeli Shorts; A Short(s) Nosh, a program on November 15 at 11 a.m. featuring short films focused on Jewish food; and A Night of Shorts, which shows at 7 pm on November 16 at the Weitzman. The latter program features Scenes From the Divide, which looks at divisions in New York’s Jewish community during Zohran Mamdani’s run for mayor.

On Friday, November 20, at 2 p.m. at the Weitzman, the program features the documentary Hollywood and Hitler, from filmmakers Clara Kuperberg and Julia Kuperberg, which looks at how Hollywood sometimes kowtowed to the Third Reich in the 1930s, before a Jewish lawyer named Leon Lewis launched an undercover network to try to stop it. The film has previously been shown only at California’s Museum of Tolerance.

And the festival wraps up on the evening of Saturday, November 21, at the Weitzman, with Dust Bowls and Jewish Souls: Another Side of Woody Guthrie. The film, directed by Steven Pressman, looks at how the legendary folk singer was introduced to New York’s Jewish community by the Yiddish poet and songwriter Aliza Greenblatt, the mother of Guthrie’s second wife. Pressman will be on hand for a talkback, along with Lorin Sklamberg of the Klezmatics.

“This film is a lot about the relationship between Woody and his mother-in-law.” Becker said, and how Guthrie “knew nothing about Jewish culture, [but] embraced Jewish experience, and Jewish culture.”