JxJ 2023 Audience Award Winners
March ’68
Dir. Krzysztof Lang
An under-told powerful love story set in 1960s Poland. Two young students – Hania (Vanessa Aleksander, Wartime Girls) and Janek – meet and fall in love amid social turmoil and Jewish discrimination in 1960s Warsaw and come to learn that freedom comes at a high price.
BEST DOCUMENTARY
A Pocketful of Miracles: A Tale of Two Siblings
Dir. Aviva Kempner
Berlin-born filmmaker Aviva Kempner chronicles her mother Hanka and uncle Dudek Ciesla’s lives before and during World War II. From their idyllic Jewish upbringing in Poland to their tearful reunion after surviving the Holocaust, this moving documentary ends by sharing the incredible lives they built in America.
RUNNER UP: BEST NARRATIVE
Exodus 91
Dir. Micah Smith
This extraordinary docu-narrative film follows North African Israeli diplomat Asher Naim, taking viewers behind the scenes – and behind the spin – of Operation Solomon, the diplomatic and military mission to bring 15,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel during Ethiopia’s brutal civil war.
RUNNER UP: BEST DOCUMENTARY
Queen of the Deuce
Dir. Valerie Kontakos
Chelly Wilson was a Christmas-celebrating Jewish grandma, a lesbian who married men, and a proud owner of porn theaters in 1970s NYC. Through audio recordings, Chelly recounts her pre-war escape from Greece up through her unlikely motherhood and rise to wealth.