The 23rd Annual Jewish Film Festival Kicks Off

For the twenty-third year in a row, Rockland’s Jewish Community Center welcomed movie-goers to the Regal Cinema in Nanuet for a screening of “Once Upon My Mother”. The film was based on a memoir written by Roland Perez, a French Lawyer and Broadcaster who was born with a club foot. The film shows audiences the remarkable story of a mother whose love for her son worked miracles. 

The film festival, sponsored by the JCC in Rockland, celebrates the stories of Jewish people from around the world on the big screen. From biographical tales about the everyday lives of Jewish people, to harrowing tales of war and occupation both in Israel and Europe, the Festival has a bit of everything.

“Once Upon My Mother” is a biographical tale about a Moroccan-Jewish family living in Paris. The movie takes you through Perez’s life, his relationship with his mother, and their relationship with French pop singer, Silvie Vartan. Perez has a heartwarming if not complicated relationship with his mother. In many ways, her doting on him as a child saved his life and gave him the ability to walk on his own two feet, but as Perez grows older his former  saving grace became his nightmare. Though there is a deep love between them, Perez’s desire to make his own decisions, and his mother’s desire to make those decisions for him, become the film’s main tension. 

The movie was fantastic and made me quite emotional. I had to give my own Jewish mother a long hug as soon as I got home from the screening. The festival runs until April 26th, with the final film, “The Ring”, being shown at the Regal in Nanuet. The JCC has also booked four guest speakers including Uri Kaufman, an author known for his book Eigh-teen Days in Octo-ber: The Yom Kip-pur War and How it Cre-at-ed the Mod-ern Mid-dle East and Andrea Winograd, the executive director of the Holocaust Museum and Center for Tolerance and Education.

Details about the film festival can be found online at jccrockland.org