Luzer Twersky

Castles in the Sky

Filmmaker and professor Pearl Gluck’s provocative latest dramatic short film centers on Malke, a Holocaust survivor and sex-ed teacher who has been leading a secret life for decades: performing slam poetry on the Lower East Side. Castles in the Sky features commanding performances from actor Lynn Cohen, who died in 2020, and poet Venus Thrash, who died in 2021.

The Chosen One

After impulsively shaving off his beard and sidelocks, a young Hasidic man experiences a nightmarish transformation that leads him right back to where he started. Over the course of one painful night, Eli Eisenstein will come to realize that it’s much easier to shave your beard than to shed who you are.

Nicht ganz Koscher

Three religions. Two men. One mission. Ben has gone off into the desert. In order to escape the matchmaking attempts of his family in Jerusalem, he agrees to fly to Alexandria to save what was once the largest Jewish community in the world, which is desperately short of a tenth man to celebrate Passover. When Ben misses his flight and is subsequently thrown off a bus in the Sinai Desert, a grumpy Bedouin in search of his lost camel becomes Ben’s only hope.

Holy Woman

A magical realist comedy about Mortality, Mysticism and the metaphysics of facial hair in Hasidic Brooklyn

Child

After the birth of her first child, a young woman struggles to find herself in the new role and connect to her new-born baby.

Division Ave

Women migrant workers from Mexico stand by the roadside and hope to find some work, the same way crowds of unemployed Americans used to stand during the Great Depression. One of them, Fernanda, gets lucky - she is hired into a Hasidic family. There Nechama, a young mother who becomes suspicious that Fernanda is lazy, discovers that a chauvinistic Jew from the recruiting agency doesn’t pay the cleaning lady. Fernanda explains herself in broken English, and even though she and her new friend might not be able to obtain any justice, they at least will be capable of revenge. Mutual understanding will prove to be stronger than the class division of society, as is right and proper. Isn’t this the kind of reconciliation across genders and cultures that the United States, and subsequently the entire world, are hoping for?

The Great Darkened Days

While a world war rages, Philippe, a draft-dodger from Quebec, takes refuge in the American West, surviving by competing in Charlie Chaplin impersonation contests. As Philippe makes his long journey home, he encounters various characters under the sway of a destructive madness borne of the chaotic times. His voyage, both violent and fascinating, is a hallucinatory initiation to the darker side of the American dream.

One of Us

Penetrating the insular world of New York's Hasidic community, focusing on three individuals driven to break away despite threats of retaliation.

Felix and Meira

A young married woman from Montreal's Orthodox Jewish community finds freedom from the strictures of her faith through her relationship with a young man who is mourning the death of his estranged father.