We are proud to announce the 2025 JCC Chicago Jewish Film Festival!

Our mission is to showcase culturally diverse, Jewishly inspired films that will entertain, educate, and inspire audiences of all generations. Our carefully curated films honor Jewish filmmakers, writers, and actors—and those committed to repairing the world through brave, artistic expression. Many films are Chicago Premieres and will include special select post-film Q&As with filmmakers, actors, and subject matter experts.

This March, for our 12th season, we will be showing 19 films in-person over three weeks!

Schedule

March 15, 2025

1:00pm

Conquering Time: Agnes Keleti

An intimate portrait of Ágnes Keleti, the oldest living Olympic Champion. An all-time star of gymnastics who made sport history in the 20th century winning 10 Olympic medals. The film follows her over a period of one year until her 101st birthday. The observational footage of her everyday life has been complemented by intimate discussions about the meaning of life and her values. The film is composed from extracts of her diary, old and new interviews, handmade animation, and a rich mix of archive footages. Ágnes was born into a Jewish family on January 9, 1921, in Budapest. As a child she wanted to be a cello player, but gymnastics took over as her primary passion. Ágnes’s full life is inseparable from the historical events she has lived through. War, hiding, loss of family members, emigration, and statelessness. Despite the indescribable physical and mental suffering the weight of history has borne on her, nothing could tear her away from gymnastics. Silently suffering, Ágnes Keleti has conquered time more than once, proving that we can remain ourselves, do not to have to live as others dictate, we must not conform to others, but be faithful to our own principles. Agnes passed away in December 2024, just shy of her 104th birthday.

Director: Katalin Oláh

78 minutes

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4:00pm

Nathan-ism

What Happens When Memories Take On A Life Of Their Own?

At the end of World War II, Nathan Hilu, the son of Syrian Jewish immigrants to New York, received a life-changing assignment from the U.S. Army: to guard the top Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials. This experience fueled a lifetime of artistic inspiration for Nathan, a virtually unknown “outsider artist”, who spent the next 70 years obsessively creating a visual narrative from his memories.

Filmmaker Elan Golod’s documentary is a portrait of the aging artist that begins as a peek at a unique witness to history and grows into an absorbing study of the function of art as an archive and invention.

Daring to question an artist’s stories, Nathan-ism is a fascinating look at one man’s need to share truths with a world that doesn’t always want to listen.

Director: Elan Golod

79 minutes

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7:00pm

The Blond Boy From The Casbah

A celebrated filmmaker returns to Algiers with his young son in a bittersweet semi-autobiographical dramedy, reflecting on the loss of his multicultural community during the Algerian War of Independence. Having emigrated to France with his family years earlier, Antoine (Léo Campion) reconnects with his roots in a neighborhood of Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Nostalgic memories flood back—school, friends, his Sephardic upbringing, and his early fascination with cinema—as he presents his new film, an account of his childhood shaped by the unrest that ultimately forced them to flee. As father and son bond over shared history, this sentimental sojourn, adapted from Alexandre Arcady’s memoir, is brought to life on the vibrant streets of Algiers, evoking a bygone time.

Director: Alexandre Arcady

128 minutes

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Date: Mar 1 - 23, 2025