Events

Houston Jewish Film Festival: An Evening of Shorts
Director Julia Elihu in attendance
Girl No. 60427
Drama | Directed by Shulamit Lifshitz | 2022 | Israel | Hebrew with English subtitles | 22 minutes
Tel Aviv, 1998. Reut finds her grandmother’s hidden Holocaust diary, transforming her carefree summer into a profound connection with her past. A true story from director Shulamit Lifshitz, a third-generation survivor.
Winter of ’79
Drama | Directed by Julia Elihu | 2022 | USA | Persian with English subtitles | 20 minutes
In writer/director Julia Elihu’s acclaimed student film project, a Persian-Jewish mother’s faith in her country is shaken when her husband is arrested. Based on her own family’s experiences escaping Iran during the 1979 Revolution.
SEVAP/MITZVAH
Drama | Directed by Sabina Vajrača | 2023 | Bosnia, Herzegovina | English, Bosnian with English subtitles | 20 minutes
In Nazi-occupied Bosnia, a Muslim woman risks everything to save her Jewish friends. Fifty years later, during the Balkan War, the tables have turned in this uplifting, true story of cross-cultural humanity.
In The Garden of Tulips
Drama | Directed by Julia Elihu | 2023 | USA | Persian with English subtitles | 14 minutes
Julia Elihu’s tender father-daughter portrayal, set at the height of the Iran-Iraq War, follows a final Persian-Jewish teenager’s final car ride with her father through the countryside before she is smuggled out of the country. Aspen Shortsfest “Youth Jury Award” winner.
Underwritten by The Maurice Amado Foundation
Patron Sponsors: Joanne and Bruce Levy
Community Partners: CBS Women the Vibrant Sisterhood of Congregation Brith Shalom, Houston Chapter of Hadassah, Houston Congregation for Reform Judaism