In its 30th season, the St. Louis Jewish Film Festival returns to its new home at the B&B Theatres in Creve Coeur for two weeks of cinema excellence from March 30 – April 8, 2025. Dramas, documentaries, comedies, and an October 7 retrospective highlight the six-day, 13-film schedule.
Do you remember your 30th birthday? (Your actual 30th, not the fifth time you “turned 29”!) Whether you remember it or not, we’ll go out on a limb and bet you didn’t have a party like the party we’re having for the St. Louis Jewish Film Festival!
We get the party started with a return to the beautiful B&B multiplex facility! Whether sitting in front of the colossal Grand Screen or experiencing the intimacy of the smaller auditoriums, we’ll be back in those cozy/comfy chairs, experiencing high-definition sights and sounds while enjoying each piece of popcorn and each other.
Opening Night
March 30
Fiddler on the Moon / Names Not Numbers Double Feature
3pm
The 30th Anniversary of the St. Louis Jewish Film Festival kicks off looking into the future! If Jews were part of a human colony on Mars, which has longer days and longer years, how would they keep the High Holidays in sync with their Earthbound Jewish brethren? How do Jewish astronauts observe the Sabbath in space? Who are some of the famous Jews who helped in the space race and journeyed into the heavens? This documentary will answer questions you didn’t even know to ask! It’s a retrospective and future-thinking film about Judaism that knows no bounds!
Guided by local journalists, Ellen Futterman (Editor-in-Chief, St. Louis Jewish Light) and Shula Neuman (former Executive Editor at St. Louis Public Radio), a group of students from Epstein Hebrew Academy takes on what seems like a simple project: interviewing Holocaust Survivors in this 2024 documentary film Names, Not Numbers® . But as they listen to firsthand stories of resilience and survival, the project becomes something more – something deeply personal and transforming.
Following the film, guests will have the opportunity to engage in powerful discussion with Tova Fish-Rosenberg, the project’s creator, the film’s director, Michael Puro, and world-renowned Holocaust Museum curator, author, and professor, Michael Berenbaum, along with several of the film’s participants from Epstein Hebrew Academy.
March 30, 7pm
One Life
You won’t want to miss Anthony Hopkins, Helena Bonham Carter, Lena Olin and Johnny Flynn in this cinematic true story about Nicholas Winton, the young London broker who, in the months leading up to World War II, rescued over 600 children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.
April 1, 3pm
Matchmaking II
Moti, Nechami and Baruch are back! Last year’s hit comedy, Matchmaking sold out in both auditoriums, and Matchmaking II picks up where the first left off—mainly getting our two lovebirds and their parents to agree on wedding details without calling the whole thing off! But what about our handsome, charming melancholy matchmaker, Baruch? Will he finally find The One? Will true love’s providence finally smile on a match for the matchless? You do not have to be familiar with the first film to fall in love with this one! But for those who saw the original last year, this is a MUST SEE!
April 1, 7pm
Bad Shabbos
When two couples, Abby and Benjamin, and David and recently-converted-to-Judaism Meg, return home for Shabbat dinner, an unexpected event threatens to unravel the whole evening. Kyra Sedgwich, David Paymer, Method Man, and Milana Vayntrub (The “AT&T girl”) lead a cast of characters, each more hilarious and specific than the next. Winner of the Audience Award where it debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival, this cast forges comedic gold. Definitely enter the theater with an empty bladder!
April 3, 3pm
Shoshana
One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. This suspenseful and surprisingly romantic adventure follows the British police’s efforts to capture the charismatic poet and Zionist freedom fighter Avraham Stern, who is doing everything he can to promote chaos, and frustrate an Israeli public to the point of wanting to evict the British authorities. Come watch what happens when these two forces go head-to-head. Can beauty tame the beast-like system? Or will romance become just another casualty amidst two ideological sides doing everything they can to win?
April 3, 7pm
Running on Sand
This hybrid comedy/drama follows a young Eritrean refugee (Omari) deported from Israel who is mistaken for the new foreign player of a struggling soccer team. The comedy (and the drama) clashes when it becomes clear his survival depends on the team’s success; and he knows nothing about the sport! Join us for an evening of suspense, smiles, laughter, and a ton of heart
April 6, 3pm
Fighters
We have all heard the stories and seen the difficult photos and newsclips from the horrifying events of October 7, 2023. JFF 2025 honors the memory of the victims, the hostages, the collective consciousness of Israel, and Jewry worldwide, by showing episode one of the powerful docuseries, Fighters. The stories of the IDF heroes who went into Gaza after 10/7 are brought to life by their exclusive body camera footage, bringing the viewers into the depths of the soldiers’ experiences. Fighters captures their struggles and triumphs, revealing the profound impact their missions had on their lives and those of their families and friends.
April 6, 7pm
October H8te
We end our 10/7 retrospective with a searing indictment of higher education in America, and the anti-Semitism fomented by progressive activists in politics, entertainment, and the educational elite. How and why are so many of our college-age students and Gen Z in general leaning into anti-Jewish hatred? Where is this worldview coming from? How is it being disseminated? What organizations are propagating this viewpoint, and who’s providing the money behind this indoctrination? This outstanding documentary provides a much-needed awakening not just in the Jewish community, but in the entire United States, if not the world. This is a movie for every Jew in every generation, and the allies that support them, and love Israel.
April 7, 3pm
Midas Man
In 1960’s Liverpool, Brian Epstein encounters a rock band that would take the world by storm. Negotiating on pure instinct, this music entrepreneur ends up managing The Beatles, and other greats like Cilia Black and Gerry and the Pacemakers. His rise to prominence is a story of passion, drive, love, and loss, and ultimately, tragedy. Jacob Fortune-Lloyd has a star turn as the complex Epstein, and Jay Leno makes a surprise cameo!
April 7, 7pm
Avenue of the Giants
Forced into the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp at the age of 12, Herbert Heller managed to escape three years later and kept the secret from everyone—including his own children—for 60 years. Now in California, and the owner of a toy store, Herbert befriends Abbey, an isolated teenager whose own brush with pain and death inspires Herbert to open up. Laugh, smile, and maybe have the Kleenex on hand for this beautiful and heartwarming film about an unlikely intergenerational friendship walking on a mutual path toward healing.
April 8, 3pm
The Stronghold
In 1973 a desolate Israeli outpost in the Sinai Desert comes under siege after a surprise Egyptian attack during the Yom Kippur War. The surviving soldiers must choose between following their idealistic commander into a final, hopeless battle, or listening to a reserve combat medic whose plan will save them but betray their core values. Human life and national pride or put at odds in this masterful film starring Michael Aloni, one of Israel’s most recognizable and successful actors, in a stellar performance.
April 8, 7pm
Irena’s Vow
We close the 30th annual STL JFF with a story of hope and resilience in a film that shows the triumph of the spirit over impossible odds, all made the more astonishing that the story is all true. The tension in Irena’s Vow is palpable from start to finish. Every moment is filled with nail-biting anticipation, leaving you on the edge of your seat, and holding your breath in anticipation of what might come next. Afterall, how long can a Polish nurse decide to hide a group of Jews right under the nose of a top German commandant?
