EXCLUSIVE: After premiering at Sundance Movie Pageant, the documentary Coexistence, My Ass! has been chosen because the Opening Evening movie for the forty fifth San Francisco Jewish Movie Pageant.
Directed by Amber Fares, Coexistence, My Ass! follows Noam Shuster-Eliassi, who grew up the literal poster youngster for the Israeli-Palestinian peace course of earlier than making a tough pivot to stand-up comedy and political satire. However because the area sinks deeper into devastating violence, she should meet the second by difficult her audiences with arduous truths which might be no laughing matter.
“We’re honored to open the San Francisco Jewish Movie Pageant with Coexistence My Ass! This pageant has lengthy championed daring, pressing storytelling, and we’re grateful for his or her help — not solely as programmers, but in addition as funders of the movie,” Fares mentioned in an announcement.
Fares and Shuster-Eliassi are anticipated to attend the July 17 screening, together with author/producer Rachel Leah Jones. The screening will happen at 6:30 p.m. on the Herbst Theatre in downtown San Francisco. The movie screens a second time on July 22 at 6 p.m. at Landmark’s Piedmont Theater in Oakland, additionally with the filmmakers in attendance.
In 2024, the Jewish Movie Institute honored Coexistence, My Ass! with its Envision Award, a completion grant that gives important help to a mission due to its singular capability to examine a world freed from prejudice and hate. Earlier this 12 months, it obtained the World Cinema Documentary Particular Jury Award for Freedom of Expression at Sundance.
It additionally gained the highest award, the Golden Alexander on the Thessaloniki Int’l Documentary Pageant and The Heart for Documentary Research Filmmaker Award at Full Body.
“In a second of escalating violence and a shrinking house for dialogue and creative freedom — particularly across the Israeli-Palestinian battle — Coexistence, My Ass! cuts by means of with readability, braveness, and sharp humor,” Lexi Leban, government director of the San Francisco Jewish Movie Pageant, mentioned in an announcement. “It’s a well timed reminder that artwork can maintain complexity and catalyze dialogue when it’s wanted most. We’re proud to have supported it by means of our Grants Program and to see it resonating on the worldwide stage.”
JFI, which “champions daring movies and filmmakers that broaden and evolve the Jewish story for audiences in all places,” has distributed extra $400,000 in grants to filmmakers since 2020, together with Sandi DuBowski’s Sabbath Queen, a 2024 Tribeca hit that closed out final 12 months’s SFJFF, in addition to Rachel Elizabeth Seed’s highly-decorated movie A Photographic Reminiscence.
SFJFF45 runs July 17 to August 3, 2025 in theaters all through San Francisco and the East Bay. The total lineup will probably be introduced on June 17, which can also be when tickets to all applications go on sale.
