Pre-Passover Jewish Film Festival Returns Mid-March at Expanded Venues
St. Louis Jewish Film Festival Returns March 15–26 with expanded venues, new interactive experiences, and global Jewish stories
by Marla Stoker / photos and videos provided by the Festival
Just in time for Passover season , which starts on April 1st, The 31st Annual St. Louis Jewish Film Festival returns March 15–26, 2026, at B&B Theatres in Creve Coeur with six days of international cinema that brings audiences together through powerful storytelling, conversation, and community. The festival will present twelve films from around the world, including documentaries, dramas, and comedies that explore Jewish identity, resilience, memory, and the universal human experience.
More than a film series, the St. Louis Jewish Film Festival is designed as a shared cultural experience. This year’s festival features live guest speakers, post-film discussions, curated thematic pairings, and new interactive elements created to deepen audience engagement and spark meaningful dialogue.
The festival opens with two films centered on memory and moral reckoning. For the Living follows cyclists retracing a Holocaust survivor’s liberation route from Auschwitz to Krakow. Nuremberg examines justice and accountability through the perspective of a psychiatrist tasked with evaluating Nazi leaders prior to their historic trials. An opening night reception for festival patrons will take place between screenings.
“At its heart, the St. Louis Jewish Film Festival is about bringing people together across generations, neighborhoods, and perspectives to experience powerful stories that remind us of who we are and what we share,” said John Wilson, Director of Cultural Arts at the J.
Throughout the week, audiences will encounter films that confront history from unexpected perspectives, explore love and legacy across generations, and celebrate humor, family, and the complexity of everyday life. The festival closes with the acclaimed and anticipated audience favorite, Eleanor the Great.
New in 2026, a select screening will take place beyond the festival’s traditional home, expanding to The Alamo Drafthouse at The Foundry on March 18 at 7:00pm. This expansion reflects the festival’s commitment to reaching younger audiences and engaging Jewish communities across the region.
The festival also introduces the Jewish Film Festival Passport, a game-inspired keepsake designed to make festival-going interactive. All-Festival Pass holders will receive a passport to track films, favorite moments, and reflections throughout the week.
ABOUT THE ST. LOUIS JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL
Now in its 31st year, the St. Louis Jewish Film Festival celebrates Jewish stories from around the world that illuminate Jewish life and the universal human experience.
ABOUT THE J
The J is a multi-generational community center offering educational, cultural, recreational, and Jewish life programming across St. Louis, including two state-of-the-art fitness facilities. Everyone is welcome.
The Films with Trailer Dates and Locations At-A-Glance
March 15, 3pm
B&B Theaters Creve Coeur West Olive 10, Creve Coeur, MO, 63141
The 31st Annual St. Louis Jewish Film Festival opens with a powerful meditation on dehumanization — and the urgent need to restore our shared humanity.
When 250 cyclists embark on a profound journey, retracing the liberation route of a Holocaust survivor from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Krakow, Poland, their ride becomes more than an act of remembrance. It becomes a living response to hatred, one that transforms memory into empathy and action at a time of rising global antisemitism.
*Q and A discussion after the screening featuring the film’s producer, Lisa Effress, and Co Director/Writer, Tim Roper. Reception to follow.
Powerful, gripping, and intellectually provocative, Nuremberg brings the world’s most infamous war crimes trial into sharp psychological focus.
Starring Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, and Michael Shannon, the film follows a U.S. Army psychiatrist tasked with evaluating Nazi leaders before they stand trial. As he becomes increasingly entangled with Hermann Göring, the line between observer and participant begins to blur, forcing him — and the audience — to confront unsettling questions about the nature of evil, accountability, and justice.
Elie Wiesel: Soul of Fire (Documentary)
March 17, 3pm
B&B Theaters Creve Coeur West Olive 10, Creve Coeur, MO, 63141
Eighty years after his liberation from Buchenwald, Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire seeks to understand the man behind one of the most searing and widely read memoirs of the Holocaust.
Told largely through Wiesel’s own words and unmistakable voice, the film penetrates the heart of both the known and lesser-known Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) — his passions, his doubts, his moral conflicts, and his lifelong insistence on bearing witness. Drawing on rare archival materials, original interviews, and striking hand-painted animation, the film illuminates Wiesel’s journey as a survivor, writer, teacher, and public conscience.
*Q and A to follow with Washington University Professor of German and Jewish Studies, Dr. Erin McGlothlin.
Set in 1943, Frontier tells the true story of a Spanish customs officer who quietly helps Jewish refugees escape Nazi-occupied France — one life at a time.
As his solitary acts of defiance grow into an underground rescue effort, he and his wife are forced to confront the lingering trauma of the Spanish Civil War and the very real danger posed by Nazi patrols along the border. Every choice carries risk, and silence itself becomes a moral decision. Tense, humane, and deeply moving, Frontier honors the courage of ordinary people who, in a moment of history’s greatest darkness, chose to act — knowing the cost, and acting anyway.
VINDICTA
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema City Foundry, St Louis, MO, 63110
B&B Theaters Creve Coeur West Olive 10, Creve Coeur, MO, 63141
After witnessing the murder of her parents, a young Jewish woman is forced into hiding — and into a life defined by rage. What begins as survival hardens into a relentless pursuit of vengeance, as she uses intimacy and deception to hunt those responsible for the destruction of her family. Each encounter blurs the line between power and peril, justice and obsession.
Inspired by true accounts of women who resisted the Nazi regime, Vindicta is a tense and morally unsettling portrait of trauma, desire, and fury — asking whether revenge can ever heal what hatred has already destroyed.
March 19, 3pm
B&B Theaters Creve Coeur West Olive 10, Creve Coeur, MO, 63141
Inspired by a shocking true story, The Tasters is a chilling portrait of survival inside Hitler’s inner circle.
In the autumn of 1943, Rosa, a young woman fleeing bombed Berlin, is forced into a terrifying role: along with other women from a remote village near the Wolf’s Lair, she must taste the F?hrer’s meals each day — never knowing if the food is poisoned. Caught between starvation and the constant threat of death, the women form fragile bonds marked by fear, rivalry, and desperate loyalty.
Set in occupied France, The Pianist’s Choice is a haunting wartime romance where art becomes both refuge and reckoning.
Francois Touraine is a gifted young pianist whose life is forever changed by his relationship with Rachel, his older Jewish piano teacher. When the Nazis take control of Paris, love and music collide with terror, forcing Francois into an impossible moral dilemma: whether to use his talent to perform for the occupiers in a desperate attempt to save the woman he loves.
What begins as a simple, almost casual discovery quickly becomes something far more profound. In this acclaimed Israeli drama (with humor!), a single object—a ring—unlocks a buried family story, forcing its present-day owner to confront questions of memory, inheritance, and moral responsibility.
Starring beloved Israeli actor Adir Miller, The Ring moves fluidly between past and present, exploring how the legacy of the Holocaust continues to shape lives generations later. As long-held truths surface, the film asks what we owe to the past—and to each other—when history suddenly becomes personal.
After an unforgettable appearance at our 2025 Jewish Book Festival & Speaker Series, Joshua Molina returns to St. Louis — this time on the big screen.
In the charming coming-of-age comedy Ethan Bloom, Molina plays a well-meaning but increasingly bewildered father whose teenage son is preparing for his Bar Mitzvah… while secretly taking confirmation classes at the local Catholic church. What follows is a heartfelt and hilarious collision of faith, family expectations, and adolescent identity.
Based on the beloved memoir by Roland Perez, Once Upon My Mother is a joyful, life-affirming true story about determination, resilience, and unconditional love.
The film begins in 1963, when Esther gives birth to Roland, the youngest of a large family, born with a clubfoot that doctors insist will prevent him from ever walking normally. Refusing to accept that fate, Esther makes her son a promise — that he will walk, thrive, and live an extraordinary life — and then sets out to make it come true.
March 26, 3pm
B&B Theaters Creve Coeur West Olive 10, Creve Coeur, MO, 63141
When Reuben, an 80-year-old actuary who believes life can be neatly measured and managed, suddenly loses both his wife and her insurance money at the local swimming pool, his carefully ordered world is thrown into chaos.
Reluctantly teaming up with his free-spirited granddaughter, Reuben launches a clumsy investigation that turns every eccentric pool regular into a prime suspect. What begins as a comic whodunit slowly becomes something deeper, as suspicion gives way to connection and shared grief opens the door to an unexpected bond.
The perfect festival farewell, Eleanor the Great marks Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut and showcases a magnificent performance by June Squibb as a woman discovering that it’s never too late to begin again.
After a devastating loss, Eleanor Morgenstein, 94, leaves Florida for New York City, where a chance friendship with a young student pulls her back into the world — and into a story she tells that begins to take on a life of its own. As humor and grief intertwine, Eleanor is forced to confront memory, truth, and the complicated ways we carry the past.