Seattle Jewish Film Festival 2023 @ AMC Pacific Place and More

March 11th – 26th 

It’s time for “cinemanna,” the term Seattle Jewish Film Festival (SJFF) creators use to describe their 28th annual outing. It’s “a cinematic feast (like manna from heaven) feeding the minds, souls, palates, and conversations in our film-loving community,” says Pamela Lavitt, Director of SJCC Arts + Ideas and Festivals, hoping the festival will “transport filmgoers out of the pandemic wilderness and a cultural desert back into community forging togetherness again.”

With 21 film programs over 16 days, most screenings will happen at AMC Pacific Place downtown and the Stroum Jewish Community Center on Mercer Island, plus virtual offerings for those who’d rather celebrate the best in global Jewish and Israeli cinema at home. The opening night offerings are plenty, with a screening of the crowd-pleasing comedy Karaoke (yes, post-film karaoke is scheduled to happen) and the SJFF Reel Difference Award ceremony honoring the film’s costar Sasson Gabay (best known from both stage and screen versions of The Band’s Visit).

Meanwhile, the annual Sunday Brunch Film selection (enjoy a preshow nosh while listening to music from the KlezKatz! and a capella group Pizmon) will be The Art of Silence, a documentary about most-famous-mime-in-history Marcel Marceau. And closing night brings audiences the sensitive, visually vibrant melodrama America, with director Ofir Raul Graizer in attendance.

Other highlights throughout the festival include the LGBTQIA+ satire Concerned Citizen, the narrative/non-fiction hybrid hostage thriller Savoy, the Spain-set period piece procedural The Replacement, the autobiographical Belgian animated drama My Father’s Secrets, the Nazi resistance doc Four Winters, the excellently titled The Jewish Lady & the Holy Thief, and the themed short film collection “Saying Kaddish.”

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