Sundance Film Festival takes on a Jewish theme

The year 2024 is an unusually Jewish year at the Sundance Film Festival, which is taking place in Park City, Utah, through January 28. Two of the 10 films in the US Dramatic Competition are on Jewish themes.

A Real Pain, a dramedy written by, directed by, and starring Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, Fleishman is in Trouble), received a standing ovation at its premiere and has sold to Searchlight Pictures. The Hollywood Reporter called it the “go-to movie to see” at the festival.

Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin (a recent Emmy-winner for the final season of Succession) play Jewish cousins on a heritage tour of Poland after the death of their beloved Holocaust-survivor grandmother.

Eisenberg also stars in and coproduced another 2024 Sundance premiere, the absurdist comedy Sasquatch Sunset. He plays a Yeti who communicates with grunts in the dialogue-free film.

The second Jewish-themed movie in the US Dramatic Competition is Between the Temples, a romantic dramedy in the vein of Harold and Maude directed by Nathan Silver (Thirst Street) and written by Silver and C. Mason Wells.

The film stars Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore, Asteroid City) as a cantor who’s unable to sing after the accidental death of his alcoholic novelist wife. He regains his voice and his joy in life while tutoring his childhood music teacher, played by Carol Kane (Hester Street, Taxi), for her belated bat mitzvah.

Dolly de Leon, known for her role in Triangle of Sadness, which opened the 2022 Jerusalem Film Festival, plays Schwartzman’s mother, a synagogue board member, who is trying to set him up with the rabbi’s daughter (Madeline Weinstein). Caroline Aaron (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) plays his other mother.

Although no Israeli films are in competition this year at Sundance, the Israeli documentary Nina is an Athlete, written and directed by Ravit Markus, screened at the parallel Slamdance Film Festival, which takes place in Park City at the same time as Sundance and focuses on films with budgets less than $1 million. It’s the story of Israeli wheelchair badminton champion Nina Gorodetsky and her goal to represent Israel in the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo.

Events held at Sundance in response to Oct. 7 attack

Several events at Sundance were held in response to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the Israel-Gaza war.

On January 18, the first day of the festival, a group of 700 “Film Workers for Palestine” released an open letter calling on Sundance attendees to draw attention to the war in Gaza. The letter was signed by British writer-directors Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, actor Susan Sarandon, producer James Schamus, and Palestinian filmmaker Larissa Sansour, among others. 

About 50 Palestinian supporters held a quiet gathering and march on Main Street in Park City on Saturday, January 20. About 100 people, including Scream star Melissa Barrera and Pose star Indya Moore, blocked Main Street at a much louder anti-war protest on Sunday, January 21. Barrera was fired from Scream 7 in November after posting about Gaza on social media.

Passersby at the Sunday protest yelled “Bring them home” in support of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas for more than 100 days, and some counterprotesters yelled “free Gaza from Hamas” and waved Israeli flags.

On Friday, January 19, more than 200 festival guests gathered in a warehouse-style exercise facility, with heavy security, for an invitation-only solidarity event to hear from freed hostages, relatives of hostages, and a survivor of the Supernova music festival massacre. Among other speakers, Ronen and Orna Neutra talked about their son Omer, 22, a hostage IDF tank commander, who is an American-Israeli citizen. 

Also on Friday, Shabbat Tent hosted its annual Shabbat Dinner and Lounge at Sundance, with about 50 guests. This was followed on Saturday by a kabbalah-inspired morning meditation, a noontime “L’Chaim, Chulent & Chill,” and a musical havdalah service in the evening. 

Several Sundance panels focused on Jewish and Israeli issues.

Malina Saval, formerly features editor at Variety, moderated a sold-out panel titled “Sects, Lies & Videotape: Debunking Deadly Tropes About Jews and Israel in TV, Film and Media” with Israeli actress/author/producer/activist Noa Tishby and Allison Josephs, founder and executive director of Jew in the City.

JITC is a nonprofit dedicated to changing negative perceptions of Jews (and especially religious Jews) in the media. This is the second year in a row that JITC has hosted a panel on Jewish representation at Sundance. The organization is preparing a study, in conjunction with the Norman Lear Center, on Jewish portrayals in media and has prepared training materials on Jewish representation for television showrunners. 

Earlier this month, 260 Hollywood figures, including David Schwimmer, Julianna Margulies, Josh Gad, Mayim Bialik, Tiffany Haddish, and Debra Messing, signed a letter organized by JITC to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (which presents the Oscars) criticizing the exclusion of Jews from the academy’s Representation and Inclusion Standards.

These standards, announced in 2020, describe identities that the academy considers underrepresented in Hollywood, including racial or ethnic groups.

The JITC letter explains, “While many mistakenly believe that Judaism is only a religion, Jews are actually an ethnic group, with a varied spiritual practice that not all observe. Jews are an indigenous people to the Middle East with a continuous presence there for over 3,000 years.”

The academy was criticized for Jewish erasure when its museum included no exhibits recognizing Hollywood’s Jewish founding fathers when it opened in 2021.

Shabbat Tent also held a networking event for Filmmakers against Anti-Semitism. The Israel Film Center and the producers of Nina is an Athlete hosted a conversation on the impact of October 7 on Israeli cinema.

Like every year, the streets of Park City are thronged with tens of thousands of guests and volunteers. This year, volunteers are clad in “Barbenheimer” pink-and-gray Kenneth Cole parkas.

Among the festival guests are members of the Israeli Bobsled and Skeleton Team, training alongside the US team in Park City and hoping to represent Israel in the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Like every year, Main Street is lined with lounges offering free snacks, cocktails, and swag to those with festival passes (or invitations). Those lucky enough to get into the IndieWire venue were gifted with parkas and fleeces from Cotopaxi, a festival sponsor. Other prime goodies included power supply hand-warmers from Dropbox and compressed oxygen (to help festivalgoers cope with the 7,000-foot [2,134 meter] altitude). 

Stores along Main Street sell skiwear, cowboy hats, $259 Rex Rabbit teddy bears, Goat Yoga Party games, and smoked cocktail kits.

Although Sundance caters to the filmmaking community, it’s open to everyone who loves film. For those who want to plan ahead, registration for Sundance 2025 will open in the fall of 2024.