Shabbat Weekly Dvar Torah

At this year’s film festival, a woman asked me how movies get chosen to be shown. There’s a portal on the festival website where film makers can submit their work, which is then reviewed by the festival staff. The decision is mainly based on Executive Director Igor Shteyrenberg’s extraordinary curatorial eye along with input from the year-round Festival Team (all 4 of them). There is usually some Jewish angle — a theme, a character, a historical moment, etc. Occasionally there isn’t a Jewish angle, but we make exceptions, like showing a movie about the treatment of Roma (aka Gypsies) during World War II. There is no Roma film festival, so we felt it appropriate to screen the movie since the Roma and Jews were both objects of Nazi racism.