Experience the 11th annual Wilmington Jewish Film Festival from April 27 to May 6 at Thalian Hall, featuring six acclaimed films, receptions, and cultural insights.
The eleventh annual Wilmington Jewish Film Festival is coming to town! Film buffs in Wilmington and around the region are soon to be treated to six internationally acclaimed films–feature films about Jewish history and culture and contemporary topics related to Jewish life. These exceptional cinematic experiences will make you laugh, cry, contemplate and just enjoy. This year the Wilmington Jewish Film Festival will be held April 27 to May 6 at Thalian Hall Center for the Performing Arts.
The Wilmington Jewish Film Festival entered the Port City’s cultural scene in October 2013 with a cheerful film celebrating Jewish songwriters’ contributions to Broadway musicals. That first film was followed by a speaker (the director) and then a catered reception offering many opportunities for conversation and community.
These elements became signature features of the annual film festivals that followed every spring, beginning in 2014. Each year, the film screenings have attracted more viewers, and the festival has become an important part of the Jewish community as well as the Wilmington community-at-large.
Screenings include internationally acclaimed films
The selections represent the best of Jewish filmic creativity in the United States, and other nations. A summer film series was added in 2017 to screen excellent films that could not be placed in the spring festival.
Outside of our scheduled festivals, we present pop-up film events to showcase important films. In November 2018, we presented the NC premier of the film Who Will Write Our History. Director/producer Roberta Grossman was brought to Wilmington for a Q&A session after the screening. In January 2024, we brought in Julia Mintz, the filmmaker for the NC premiere of Four Winters. Both events were tremendously successful.
The festival’s host venue is historic Thalian Hall Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Wilmington. One feature of the festival is a reception that follows each of the films, giving the audience an opportunity to discuss the film with fellow filmgoers.
This year’s films are as follows:
The Boy in the Woods – Sunday, April 27 at 3pm Trailer
Followed by a Bites and Bubbles reception
October 8 – Monday, April 28 at 7pm Trailer
Followed by a reception with frozen custard from Kremium
Bad Shabbos – Tuesday, April 29 at 7pm Trailer
Followed by a Dessert reception
Midas Man – Sunday, May 4 at 3pm Trailer
Followed by mocktail slushes from Kona ice
Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire – Monday, May 5 at 7pm Trailer
Followed by a Dessert reception
The Glory of Life – Tuesday, May 6 at 7pm Trailer
Followed by a Dessert reception
Education
In the Spring of 2017, in keeping with Wilmington Jewish Film Festival‘s educational mission, we expanded our cultural outreach to include daytime screenings of an age-and theme-appropriate film for local public high school students as an enhancement of their English curriculum on the Holocaust.
Since 2017, the festival has added more schools and increased the opportunity to all 10th-grade public high school students in New Hanover and Pender Counties. By offering screenings in both the spring and the fall we can include the greatest number of students. We now host over 2000 participants at either the Wilson Center or Thalian Hall every school year. Fanny’s Journey, the film shown, is based on the true story of Holocaust survivor Fanny Ben-Ami who led a group of children when she herself was only twelve years old from France to the Swiss border.
For the first time, this year we collaborated with UNCW where we brought a Holocaust film to campus, and we plan to continue this partnership in the future.
Want to Go
Individual tickets can be purchased through the Thalian Hall Box Office. A Cinema Pass can be purchased through our website WilmingtonJFF.org
Request a copy today!
