Simi Horwitz is a feature writer and film reviewer based in New York City. In 2022, she received first place for film criticism from the Society for Feature Journalism, and in 2023, a New York Press Club Award for an Entertainment News feature; and three Los Angeles Press Club Awards, including first place for film criticism — all for pieces published in the Forward.
Simi Horwitz
By Simi Horwitz
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Culture In the slums of Tel Aviv, a disturbing tale of Beauty meeting the Beast
Though the film “Woman Alive” may be a retread of themes we’ve seen before, it is cinematically riveting — from its imagery to most seminally, its ambience, which evokes a marginalized, nihilistic world. It marks an impressive narrative debut for its director Macabit Abramson, who is best known for her documentaries and experimental aesthetic. Jerusalem-based…
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Culture A Jewish prisoner. An SS officer. A forbidden relationship. An absolutely stunning documentary.
There seems to be little doubt that SS officer Franz Wunsch was intensely in love with Helena Citron, a pretty and talented Jewish inmate in Auschwitz. Her feelings for him, however, remain ambiguous. It is indeed the unanswered core question of the stunning documentary, “Love, It Was Not,” that is at once rooted in the…
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Culture As mathematic geniuses go, this Jewish enigma was no Stephen Hawking
In the pantheon of films about real-life mathematicians — think Alan Turing in “The Imitation Game,” Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything,” or even John Nash in “A Beautiful Mind” — Stan Ulam, the title character in “The Adventures of a Mathematician,” falls a tad short. Perhaps comparisons are unfair. After all, Turing (Benedict…
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Culture How two visionary Jewish nightclub owners changed the face of entertainment
From the early 1950s to the mid-1970s, Mr. Kelly’s — a nightclub on Rush Street in Chicago — was a new kind of entertainment venue. Intimate (just 200 seats) and relatively inexpensive, it merged a range of programs, including jazz and stand-up comedy, on the same program. Mr. Kelly’s helped to launch the careers of…
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Culture Remembering a visit with the late Ed Asner, star of ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ and ‘Lou Grant’
Editor’s Note: Ed Asner, who starred in ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ and ‘Lou Grant’ died Sunday at age 91. Today, we look back on a 2012 interview with Simi Horwitz in which he spoke about Judaism, journalism and his final wishes. Ed Asner was seated in a makeshift living room in a large, garishly…
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Culture In Facebook’s first documentary, a self-taught photography expert becomes an unlikely 9/11 hero
Even before it opened its doors in 2014, the 9/11 Museum at Ground Zero was awash in controversies, not least its designated mission: Was it supposed to be a memorial or a “living exhibition” — and what does “living exhibition” even mean? Now as we approach the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, “The Outsider,”…
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Culture Confronting America’s ugly history of forced sterilization
Peabody and Emmy award-winning documentarian Erika Cohn has been an activist-artist for a long time. Her film “The Judge” detailed the unprecedented experiences of the first woman judge appointed in the Middle East’s Shari’a courts, and “In Football We Trust” she explored the struggles of young Pacific Islander men determined to play professional football. Her…
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Culture Is the organ donation system run by a ‘God Committee’? This writer-director wants us to ask.
When writer-director Austin Stark, 42, heard about a wealthy man in desperate need of a liver transplant bribing a hospital for an organ, he was shocked and appalled — and couldn’t stop thinking about it. “And then I read a powerful play by Mark St. Germain, which explores a very similar situation, and in doing…
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