In keeping with the Museum’s mission to foster dialogue around pluralism, identity, and society, the event offered more than a screening—it offered a window into a world rarely seen on film. The evening featured five short films, each around 15 minutes long, written, directed, and produced by the school’s graduates. These powerful student works, filled with emotional depth and bold storytelling, reflect the unique voices of a new generation of Jewish filmmakers.

Among the films shown:

Trees and Weeds: A young yeshiva student is summoned to a pivotal meeting with his Rosh Yeshiva—an encounter that shifts the course of his life. It is a haunting story of fear, faith, and truth.

Memory Doll: Two children, Roy and Noa, awaken on the morning of October 7 to find their world forever changed. What begins as a desperate search for their parents becomes a tender coming-of-age journey through loss and resilience.

Unrelated Connection: A young man, convinced he’s cracked the code for finding perfect love, reinvents himself on every matchmaking date—until he meets someone who challenges everything he believes.

The Koren Film School stands alone in Israel as a professional film academy rooted in a Jewish worldview. Its 70 students—men and women from various religious backgrounds—can choose to study in mixed or separate classrooms, reflecting the school’s sensitivity to community norms while encouraging personal growth and artistic exploration. Over three years, students receive hands-on training in screenwriting, directing, cinematography, editing, and production.

The event was guided by Menny Vakshutok, acclaimed filmmaker and creator of the hit YouTube series “Bardak”. With over 100,000 subscribers and 35 million views, the series offers a sharp, comedic take on life in Jerusalem’s Haredi community. Vakshutok, who specializes in social cinema, was joined by leading figures in the Israeli film world like director Uri Gruder and documentary filmmaker Ophir Trainin, and cinematographer Oded Ashkenazi.

The evening began with a guided tour of “06:29: From Darkness to Light”, the Museum’s powerful current exhibition that features firsthand testimonies of 35 women who survived the October 7 terror attacks—including Nova music festival survivors, mothers of hostages, and first responders—the exhibit brought profound context to the films that followed.

As the lights dimmed and the first film began, the audience leaned in—not just to the stories on screen, but to the voices behind them. In that shared space, one could feel the merging of tradition and creativity, of memory and imagination.