Jewish Winners at Sundance
We called it! Both feature-length films premiering at Sundance we wrote about last week have won awards at the prestigious film festival.
First-time director Jill Soloway won the Directing Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition for her film, “Afternoon Delight,” about what happens when a frustrated Jewish housewife living in the hip Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles hires a stripper to be her child’s nanny.
Soloway, who is an Emmy-nominated television writer, told the Forward how important it was for her to try her hand at directing. “I could have remained a well respected writer who didn’t get anything of my own made,” she said. “But I stopped waiting for directing opportunities to come my way, and I built that reality myself.”
The “Afternoon Delight” production team is doubly proud, with Kathryn Hahn, who plays the film’s protagonist, Rachel, putting in one of the 10 best performances at Sundance, according to New York Magazine.
“Inequality For All,” a documentary featuring former U.S. labor secretary Robert Reich and his economic theories, won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Achievement in Filmmaking. In the movie by Jacob Kornbluth, we see the UC Berkeley professor skillfully and passionately arguing that widening income inequality is a great — if not, the greatest — threat to our economy and democracy. Some expect “Inequality For All” to be a real game-changer, to do for the economy what “An Inconvenient Truth” did for climate change.
Sebastian Dungan, who co-produced both films with his partner Jen Chaiken, has told the Forward that “Inequality For All” has been sold to the Radius/Weinstein Company for an undisclosed sum. “And we’re in talks with a number of distributors in regards to ‘Afternoon Delight,’” he said.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.