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2026 feels like an especially precarious time to host the Portland Jewish Film Festival. Should the slate of films show the Israeli perspective, the Palestinian perspective or the American perspective? Should the lineup appeal to Jewish or non-Jewish audiences? Should there be documentaries or narrative films?
The answer? Yes—to all of it.
It’s a tall order, but the festival’s presenter, the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, aims to give an expansive view of what contemporary Jewish storytelling looks like. There will be six films in the 33rd annual Portland Jewish Film Festival, which kicks off Feb. 24.
“It feels, in this moment, especially important to reach non-Jewish communities and audiences so that they can go beyond what they see in the headlines, to meet Jewish people and to see Jewish stories in this humanizing way,” says Mariah Berlanga-Shevchuk, OJMCHE’s head of public engagement.
To that end, one of the most eagerly anticipated offerings at the festival is Holding Liat, which is about an Israeli hostage taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. The other one is The Sea, a narrative film in Arabic from the perspective of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy who cannot get through an Israeli military checkpoint to join his school field trip to the Mediterranean.
“It helps to open up a complicated conversation,” Berlanga-Shevchuk says. “I don’t see it as them being one for one. I think we would have shown one without the other, but it does work out nicely that they’re both in the festival.”
The Portland Jewish Film Festival screenings will be held at three different locations in town, from Feb. 24 to March 1, some with Q&A’s with filmmakers and experts. Ticketholders can also stream many of the movies online. Here are this year’s films:
The Stamp Thief is a documentary billed as a real-life Argo-like adventure, but with postage stamps. Onetime Seinfeld producer Gary Gilbert sets out to confirm a story that during the Holocaust, a Nazi officer stole priceless stamp collections from Jews and buried them in a small town in Poland. Gilbert and his team even put together a fake film production in order to get entrée to where the stamps might be hidden. Whitsell Auditorium at Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., 503-226-2811, portlandartmuseum.org/whitsell. 6 pm Tuesday, Feb. 24.
Although it didn’t end up getting the Oscar nod, The Sea is Israel’s official submission for the 2026 Academy Awards. Khaled is a 12-year-old boy from a village in Gaza who gets the chance to see the Mediterranean Sea for the first time on a school trip—except Khaled doesn’t make it past the Israeli military checkpoint due to a paperwork issue. Even though he doesn’t know Hebrew, the boy sets out on his own across Israel to get to the sea himself, with his father soon in hot pursuit. The Sea was “head and shoulders a favorite” film among the festival’s selection committee, Berlanga-Shevchuk says. Tomorrow Theater, 3530 SE Division St., 503-221-1156, tomorrowtheater.org. 6 pm Wednesday, Feb. 25.
Cinema 21 will host the Oregon premiere of the suspenseful documentary Holding Liat, which follows the family of Liat Beinin Atzili in the weeks immediately after she was kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, 202,3 from her home at Kibbutz Nir Oz. Filmmakers Brandon and Lance Kramer were already family friends with the Beinin Atzilis, and Holding Liat benefits greatly from their immediate access to and intimacy with the family during their ordeal. It has an unexpected Oregon connection, too: Liat’s sister, cousin, aunt and uncle all reside in Portland, and some of the scenes are filmed here. The family and the film are all the richer for their diversity of political opinions about the war in Gaza. It’s a harrowing but urgent watch. Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave., 503-223-4515, cinema21.com. 6 pm Thursday, Feb. 26.
The documentary Among Neighbors focuses on what happened in Poland during World War II and after. Filmmaker Yoav Potash tells the story of the only living Holocaust survivor from a small, rural town in Poland—and an aging eyewitness who saw Jews murdered there six months after the Nazis were defeated. Tomorrow Theater. 6 pm Saturday, Feb. 28.
Maintenance Artist is a documentary on the groundbreaking feminist artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Ukeles has been the artist-in-residence of the New York City Department of Sanitation, recycling trash into large-scale public artworks. You can draw a straight line from Ukeles’ work to local programs like GLEAN Portland, Metro’s juried art program. Tomorrow Theater. Noon Sunday, March 1.
Actors Sasson Gabay and Assi Levy play an older Israeli couple in Bliss (Hemda), a drama billed as a “quietly powerful meditation on loyalty, love, and the parts of ourselves we hide even from those closest to us.” Tomorrow Theater. 6 pm Sunday, March 1.
SEE IT: Portland Jewish Film Festival, ojmche.org/events/portland-jewish-film-festival. See website for venues and showtimes. Feb. 24–March 1. $35–$125.
