“Who Will Write Our History”, dir. Roberta Grossman
“Chasing Portraits”, dir. Elizabeth Rynecki
“Happiness of the World”, dir. Michal Rosa

Wednesday, January 9, 2019 – Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Walter Reade Theater
165 W 65th St, New York, NY 10023
Tickets: $15

The Jewish Museum, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Polish Cultural Institute are delighted to continue their partnership presenting Polish films that explore the diversity of Jewish experience at the 28th annual New York Jewish Film Festival.

This year’s festival features an exciting lineup of documentary, narrative, and short films, including new work by fresh voices in international cinema as well as restored classics.

Among Polish accents during the festival there will be three Polish productions and co-productions:

Happiness of the World, directed by Michal Rosa and starring Karolina Gruszka; Polish-US documentary Who Will Write Our History, directed by Roberta Grossman, and Chasing Portraits, directed by Elizabeth Rynecki.

Happiness of the World, dir. Michal Rosa
Poland, 2016, 98 min.
January 21, 8:30 PM
January 22, 3:15 PM
New York Premiere

It’s the summer of 1939 and Rose (Karolina Gruszka), a beautiful young Jewish woman, has three aggressive suitors—a Pole, a Silesian, and a German—in an apartment building on the Polish-German border. But her heart belongs to another: a fun-loving journalist who has recently arrived from Warsaw. The film follows Rose and the suitors through this delightfully dark comedy of manners as the encroaching war starts to cast their lives and romances in an ever more quixotic light.

Who Will Write Our History, dir. Roberta Grossman
USA/Poland, 2018, 95 min.
January 17, 3:30 PM & 8:30 PM
Q&As with Roberta Grossman, producer Nancy Spielberg, and historian Samuel Kassow on January 17; actor Joan Allen also in attendance for 8:30pm screening
New York Premiere

When the Nazis created the Warsaw Ghetto, a group of scholars, journalists, and community leaders, led by historian Emanuel Ringelblum, conducted a secret effort to document the fate of the 450,000 Jews sealed within. These testimonies comprise perhaps the most important archive of original material compiled by Jews during the Holocaust.

Chasing Portraits, dir. Elizabeth Rynecki
USA/Canada/Israel/Poland, 2018, 78 min.
January 14, 6PM & January 16, 1PM
Q&As with Elizabeth Rynecki (joined by Director of Photography Slawomir Grunberg on January 14)
N.Y. Premiere

After the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, artist Moshe Rynecki left his collection of more than 800 paintings and sculptures notable for portraying the everyday life of Polish Jews with friends around Warsaw for safekeeping. But after he was killed in Majdanek, the Rynecki family lost track of the vast majority of them, and they were dispersed among collections around the world. Decades later, his great-granddaughter Elizabeth enlists the help of historians, curators, and private collectors to uncover the extraordinary path of Moshe’s collection. Chasing Portraits is a rich and compelling documentary about one woman coming to terms with her family’s legacy and her place within it.