Sneak Preview Screening Collection

Overview

Award-winning filmmaker and Washington Jewish Film Festival Founder Aviva Kempner and award-winning filmmakers Lance and Brandon Kramer will join us for a sneak peek of their next work-in-progress documentary films.

About the Works in Progress

Dir. Aviva Kempner
Aviva Kempner presents her newest work-in-progress on Ben Hecht, initially a Chicago newspaperman who rose to fame as a distinguished author, playwright, and Oscar-winning screenwriter in the 1920s through the 1940s. Deeply moved to hear about the destruction of European Jewry, Hecht became politically active with the Bergson group in saving their Jewish brethren by writing impactful newspaper ads, authoring and staging pageants, and rallying Orthodox rabbis to march on the nation’s Capital. His nail-biting script for Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious, starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains, focuses on an American espionage plot to expose Nazis after the war.

Dirs. Brandon and Lance Kramer
A documentary feature film in-progress about the family of two hostages taken from their kibbutz on October 7. When the family finds themselves in the epicenter of a global crisis, they are thrown into the complexities of the efforts to bring their loved ones home and find peace in the region

Dir. Hanan Brandes
Director Hanan Brandes presents a full-length documentary in the works about his late cousin, Or Brandes, who was killed last December in battle in the Gaza Strip. Through archival materials, home videos, and interviews, a portrait emerges of a joyful, funny, and life-embracing soldier who was taken before his time. Recreations of the “podcast” he transmitted over the tank’s communication network—a live talk show designed to boost the morale of his fellow soldiers amidst the war zone—shed light on his special character.