In hindsight, the clues were always there. Genie Milgrom grew up attending Miami Catholic schools, but something always felt off.
She was spiritual, but felt called to something else. Her mother’s side of the family never went to church. Her grandmother’s Spanish culinary traditions turned out to be kosher practices. And when Milgrom converted to Judaism as an adult, her grandmother and mother kept warning her, “It’s so dangerous.”
Milgrom’s documentary film, “Between the Stone and the Flower,” follows her decades-long journey of uncovering her family’s hidden Jewish heritage dating to before the Spanish Inquisition, which began in the 1400s. It’s one of 120 films — from Miami and beyond — to be screened during the Miami Jewish Film Festival, the world’s largest Jewish film program and the largest showcase of Israeli films.
The festival, which runs from Jan. 11 to 25 at venues throughout Miami-Dade, aims to capture the diversity of the Jewish experience, from potential Academy Award contenders to deep dives into America’s creative kosher food scene and historical dramas.
“It feels surreal,” Milgrom said about participating in the festival. “I’m like walking on a cloud. Even though I’ve told my story, it’s not an easy story to tell because it was a very difficult journey for me. I kind of had to put it all out there.”
Typically, preparing for the festival is busy, exciting and joyous. This year, the mood is more somber.
The festival comes just months after Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians. Hamas took about another 240 people hostage, with about 160 still trapped in Gaza after Hamas in November released some hostages in exchange for Israel releasing Palestinian prisoners. After the Hamas attack, Israel responded with airstrikes and a ground invasion, killing more than 22,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the Associated Press reports.
FILMS CAN BUILD UNDERSTANDING
The aftermath has stoked antisemitism and hate speech. Tensions have run high on college campuses. And the South Florida Jewish community has tried to find comfort in difficult times.
That’s where the Miami Jewish Film Festival comes in, said Igor Shteyrenberg, the festival’s executive director. Film is much more than just entertainment, he said; it’s an “empathy machine.”
“In times of crisis, when emotions are raw and perspectives may be polarized, cinema can become a bridge that fosters understanding and compassion,” he said.
The festival aims to provide the community with a safe space to heal and reflect while engaging in meaningful conversations, Shteyrenberg said. Late last year, the festival organized a memorial film screening to honor Yahav Winner, an Israeli filmmaker who was killed by Hamas militants as he protected his wife and newborn.
“It is an essential time for Jewish voices to make themselves heard,” Shteyrenberg said. “The stories that are part of this year’s festival lineup are hopeful, romantic, rebellious, awe-inspiring, compassionate and daring, and will remind us that our visibility is always worth fighting for as we celebrate our Jewish story and identity.”
The festival includes feature-length and short films from 25 countries with 10 world premieres, 10 international premieres, 12 North American premieres and seven U.S. premieres. The festival will stream over 80 films online and offer over 80 in-theater screenings across eight Miami venues, including in Miami Beach, Coral Gables and Miami Shores.
The festival opens with “One Life” starring Academy Award-winning actor Anthony Hopkins as Sir Nicholas Winton, a humble British stockbroker who helped saved 669 Jewish children from the Nazis.
For 50 years, he said nothing about his efforts to save those children. In 1988, the BBC television show, “That’s Life,” covered his story. In a now-famous clip from the episode, the TV host asked, “Is there anyone in our audience tonight who owes their life to Nicholas Winton?” Everyone around him stood up.
The film will be shown Jan. 11 at the Miami Beach Bandshell.
When curating this year’s lineup, Shteyrenberg said he hopes audiences will walk away feeling inspired. Here is a look at some of the festival’s must-see films.
‘I WAS A JEW ALL ALONG’
People have told Milgrom, who has been documenting her life story and her family’s history for over a decade, that she should make a movie. “No, no, no, no, no,” she would say. That changed when she met director Roberto Otero Morfa. “It’s time,” he told her.
Milgrom’s family emigrated from Spain to Cuba, where she was born. The family had only lived in Cuba for one generation before coming to Miami in 1960, where she grew up steeped in Catholicism. It came as a shock to the rest of her family when she converted to Judaism at age 37. Little did she know, “I was a Jew all along,” she said.
Years after Milgrom converted, her grandmother died, leaving her a pair of earrings with the Star of David and a Hamsa, or “Hand of God.” She knew in that moment that her family had been Jews in hiding, escaping persecution. But she had to prove it.
For 15 years, Milgrom researched her family’s roots and retraced a maternal lineage of Judaism dating back to 1391. She even found the document that sentenced her ancestors to death in Lisbon after the Inquisition spread to Portugal. They were burned alive at the stake from the 1500s to 1690.
“Between the Stone and the Flower” follows the twists, turns and shocking revelations of Milgrom’s odyssey. Its world premiere is Jan. 14 at The Hub at Temple Beth Am.
“I think that we have to be front and center more than anything,” she said. “My family hid for 500 years. I cannot be that person.”
THE JOY OF (KOSHER) COOKING
In predominately Jewish neighborhoods across the United States, there’s always at least one kosher restaurant for the Jewish community to gather, eat and be merry. Growing up Orthodox Jewish in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, CW Silverberg didn’t have that.
“I was always fascinated by the lifestyle because none of my friends kept kosher,” he said. “I was the odd one out.”
Silverberg’s fascination with kosher cuisine and his love of TV led to “Schmoozing and Cruising: Tripping on Kosher Americana,” an original series on the streaming service ChaiFlicks directed by Tsvika Tal. The show, based on Silverberg’s YouTube channel called Tripping Kosher, travels to places like Brooklyn, Cleveland, Chicago and Los Angeles to highlight innovative kosher restaurants.
The show swings by South Florida restaurants. During the burger episode, the show highlights Capas Burger in Aventura. In Fort Lauderdale, Silverberg eats decadent French cuisine at Moran Patisserie Bakery, home to what he calls “one of the finest kosher breakfast sandwiches in the country.”
For the Christmas episode, the show stops in North Miami Beach to eat at Bambu Pan Asian Kitchen, a kosher kitchen run by a non-kosher married couple that hail from Vietnam. In the 1970s, Vietnamese refugees fled their home country by boat to escape the Vietnam War. Some ended up in Israel, where the restaurant owners met. Today, Silverberg attests, they make “the best kosher dim sum in Miami.”
The show is all about good food and “good vibes,” Silverberg said.
“There’s a lot of questions right now about the Jewish community and what it means in America,” he said. “What we’re here to do is to provide some sort of respite from that noise and some sort of idea that we are American Jews who keep kosher, and we experience joys of food just like everybody else.”
“Schmoozing and Cruising” is available to stream on the Miami Jewish Film Festival’s website.
JUDAISM ‘CREATES ACTIVISTS’
For Rabbi Tamar Manasseh, activism and Judaism are inseparable.
“Rabbi on the Block” follows Manasseh, a Black rabbinical student and activist in Chicago’s South Side. The documentary explores her deep relationship with Judaism, her journey to become the community’s only female rabbi and the role Black Jews play in bridging communities. In 2020, Manasseh and director Brad Rothschild collaborated on “They Ain’t Ready for Me,” a documentary about her work against gun violence in Chicago.
“That’s what Judaism creates, it creates activists,” she said. “It creates doers in the world.”
The documentary, an intimate look into Manasseh’s life and congregation, is sure to spark conversations about race and Judaism, Rothschild said.
Especially in the wake of Oct. 7, Rothschild and Manasseh stressed how important it is for the Jewish community to engage in meaningful — and sometimes difficult — conversations when it comes to racism and antisemitism.
“I’m not gonna get into specifics about politics, but we’re in a very fragile moment in world history, Jewish history and American history,” Rothschild said. “We have to do something. Really what we have to do is start talking to each other rather than past one another.”
“Rabbi on the Block” screens Jan. 18 at the Michael-Ann Russell JCC.
CELEBRATING COURAGE
When Maxwell Smart was 7 years old, he dreamt of becoming an artist. A teacher told his parents he had talent worth pursuing.
Smart, now 93, believes his artistic creativity is what kept him alive as he hid from the Nazis in the forests of Poland.
“I really dug with my hands a grave and I buried myself alive,” he said. “I survived, not because I am smart or I am capable or whatever the reason. I survived, I think, I think, because of the power of my art. The art that I had in my brain looking up in the sky in the winter and the summer kept me alive. The power of art kept my sanity.”
“The Boy in the Woods,” a Canadian-made film, recounts Smart’s remarkable story of survival. After the Nazis killed his entire family, Smart escaped into the woods at just 11 years old and hid. The film has its U.S. premiere Jan. 20 at the Michael-Ann Russell JCC.
The film was produced and directed by Rebecca Snow, who first met Smart in 2019 in Miami when she was working on a documentary about child survivors of the Holocaust. Smart’s harrowing experience, which he wrote about in his memoir, stuck with her.
“It sort of kept haunting me,” she said. “I could see it playing out in a dramatic way as a movie.”
The film’s screening in Miami feels like a full-circle moment, Snow said, as she will be in attendance with Smart. The film carries a poignant message, she said, especially today.
“It’s very important — as we see a rise in hate crimes, antisemitism massively on the rise, Islamophobia, racism — to amplify these warnings from history,” Snow said. “Lessons from the Holocaust have to be part of education against all forms of racial prejudice and hatred. It’s important to celebrate these stories of courage and resilience winning out over hatred and fear.”
Smart said he feels deeply honored by the film and the performance of Jett Klyne, the young actor who plays him. He’s especially grateful to Snow for hearing his story and bringing it to the masses.
“It is very important for me. I am anxious to see the reaction of the movie,” he said. “I never, never in my entire life dreamt that my memoir would ever be produced as a film.”
Smart, who lives in Montreal and stays in South Florida in the winter, said his life is proof that recovery from pain and suffering is possible. He became the artist he always wanted to be, and he loves to talk about painting. Still, he laments the suffering of children in times of war. His sister was killed by Nazis when she was 5.
When adults spark conflict, children — whether they’re “Jews, Palestinians, Spanish, Black, white” — always suffer, he said.
“If my film, or other films, can bring back the sanity to man, I don’t know,” he said. “I hope it will. It should.”
MIAMI JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2024
When: Jan. 11-25
Where: Venues for screenings include Coral Gables Art Cinema, The Hub at Temple Beth Am, Miami Beach Bandshell, Miami Theater Center, Michael-Ann Russell JCC, O Cinema South Beach and the Miami Beach JCC.
Info: Tickets and full schedule available online at https://miamijewishfilmfestival.org/
This story was produced with financial support from The Pérez Family Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.
