Shorts WJFF

13 DRIVER’S LICENSES

Ryoya Terao, USA, 2022, 27 min

The discovery of thirteen confiscated driver’s licenses from 1938 leads a small German town to face a horrendous past. A group of high school students with their tenacious teacher research the fates of the town's former Jewish citizens. A year later some of the Jewish descendants visit “their hometown”.

26.10, Thursday | 18:00 | Centrum Kultury Jidysz / Center for Yiddish Culture

CASTLES IN THE SKY

Roland Manookian, USA, 2022, 15 min

Living in a cloistered Hasidic milieu in Brooklyn, Malke is a Holocaust survivor and a beloved sex-ed teacher who has never been able to have children of her own. However, Malke has secretly been slamming poetry in New York's Lower East Side for the last three decades, defying all communal norms and laws. One day her transgressive pursuits are discovered by one of her bridal students. Is Malke willing to risk it all for her poetry? The film includes live readings from poets such as Venus Thrash, Julia Kasdorf, and Everton Sylvester as well as featuring poetry by Yermiyahu Ahron Taub and Esther Hoffman.

25.10, Wednesday | 18:00 | Centrum Kultury Jidysz / Center for Yiddish Culture

CUT

Samuel Lucas Allen, Australia, 2023, 19 min

Daniel, a teenage boy caught in a thickening web of lies, is pulled in different directions by his buddy, burgeoning anti-Semite, James, his secret lover, Isaac, and his orthodox Jewish father, Adam. As his ability to juggle his identities falters, he finds himself haunted by a Hasidic spectre demanding a sacrifice.

25.10, Wednesday | 18:00 | Centrum Kultury Jidysz / Center for Yiddish Culture

DEMON BOX

Sean Weinstein, Canada, 2023, 14 min

Intensely personal short film about trauma, suicide and the Holocaust. Wrapped in a deceptive meta-genre package, this witty documentary/narrative hybrid explores the generational impact of ultimate experiences.

26.10, Thursday | 18:00 | Centrum Kultury Jidysz / Center for Yiddish Culture

FAMILY PORTRET (Portret rodzinny)

Dominik Chaciński, Poland, 2023, 20 min

After reaching 18th birthday, Sandra, who lives in an orphanage, is forced to pay for a room. Wanting to continue to have a roof over her head, she unwittingly decides to work as a cleaner. When she arrives at the cleaning site, it turns out that she will be cleaning the house of the dead people. She is more interested in the story of the house and the owner than in the actual cleaning - when people claiming to be family come to the house, she helps them. After a while, it turns out that the couple came for only one thing, a painting that Sandra found in a hidden room, the woman describes it as a miniature of a Jewish woman. Sandra realizes that they are scammers..

25.10, Wednesday | 18:00 | Centrum Kultury Jidysz / Center for Yiddish Culture

Kredens + Documents

Jacob Dammas, Poland, Denmark, 2007, 2004, 36 min

"KREDENS", Poland, Denmark 2007, 26 min.
40 years after his Polish-Jewish mother and family escaped Poland to Denmark, Jacob, a young Danish film director, visits the building in Wrocław where the family lived. He tries to engage in conversations with the current tenants about a piece of furniture left there, an old German credenza. During the search, Jacob also involves his mother over the phone, which opens up new clues and wider perspectives. A personal, tragicomic story about how history and displacement of people affects the identity ... read more

28.10, Saturday | 17:30 | Muzeum POLIN

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