This week on Jews on Film, hosts Harry and Daniel sit down with director and producer Simon Mendes (The Darkest Light, Dick Johnson Is Dead, Sabbath Queen) to talk about the Coen Brothers’ 2013 film Inside Llewyn Davis. Simon’s new documentary on Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, winner of the Best First Feature award at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, takes on his musical legacy and the allegations of abuse that followed it. That makes him a natural guest for a film about a folk singer in 1961 Greenwich Village.

They discuss art vs. commerce, whether we can separate the art from the artist, and how Carlebach’s music lives on in synagogues today. Then they head into the Jewish stretches, from the Griffins to the seven-day shiva structure to the wandering Jew, and the cat. As always, they close out the episode by selecting their most Jewish scenes, debating if the movie is “good for the Jews,” and ranking the film’s “Jewishness” in terms of its cast & crew, content, and themes.

Simon Mendes:

• The Darkest Light (SFJFF film page) - https://jfi.org/sfjff-2026/film-guide/the-darkest-light
• Simone Mendes on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/simongmendes/

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Harry and Daniel welcome cartoonist and author Amy Kurzweil to talk about Spike Jonze’s Her (2013). Amy’s graphic memoir Artificial: A Love Story follows her father’s attempt to build a chatbot from her late grandfather’s writings, so she’s well placed to ask the big question: can a relationship with an operating system be real?

They dig into why the film’s utopia feels a little dystopian, why the OSs leave, and what Samantha has to do with the Golem. As always, they close out the episode by selecting their most Jewish scenes, “stretches of the pod,” debating if the movie is “good for the Jews,” and ranking the film’s “Jewishness” in terms of its cast & crew, content, and themes.

Amy Kurzweil Links:

• Website - https://www.amykurzweil.com
• Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/amykurzweil
• Artificial: A Love Story - https://bookshop.org/p/books/artificial-a-love-story-amy-kurzweil/ca42b0e11c088bdf
• Flying Couch: A Graphic Memoir - https://shop.yiddishbookcenter.org/products/flying-couch-a-graphic-memoir

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Daniel and Harry are joined by novelist Melanie Anagnos to discuss Vittorio De Sica's 1970 Oscar winner The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, about an aristocratic Jewish family in Ferrara sealing themselves off from the world — and from Italy's 1938 racial laws — behind the walls of their estate.

The trio digs into the film's tennis-club-turned-exile opening, the garden as an Edenic stand-in for both sanctuary and denial, and the bigger question the film keeps circling: who gets to decide whether you're an Italian Jew or a Jewish Italian. They also debate whether the family's insulated, aristocratic remove from the war closing in around them reads as denial or something closer to grace.

As always, they close out with some stretch-of-the-pod theories — walls, gates, and Garden of Eden symbolism included — before rating the film's Jewishness on their 1 to 5 scale.

Melanie's Links

• Check out Melanie's work
• Cherchez La Femma - Melanie's Substack
• Buy the "Nightswimming" Audiobook

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