An intriguing new film, Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish, is making its American debut on Sunday, January 16, 2011 at the 20th New York Jewish Film Festival. The debut is sold out, but tickets are still available for the its second screening on Wednesday, January 26 at 1:15 at the Walter Reade Theater in New York (165 W. 65th St., between Broadway and Amsterdam Ave.). Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish has played at film festivals in Europe, Australia, South Africa and Israel. The film won a prize at the prestigious Berlin film festival.

Shot in Brooklyn and Manhattan in 2009 for $175,000

Written and Directed by Eve Annenberg, Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish was produced with non-professional actors who had dropped out of New York’s diverse Chasidic Jewish communities. The film was completed in three months and cost $175,000. Shot in Brooklyn and Manhattan in 2009, it is a film-within-a-film about a bunch of young and restless former Orthodox Jews struggling to make a Yiddish film version of Romeo and Juliet.

Romeo and Juliet… First Yiddish “mumblecore”