Synopsis

A new film from veteran filmmaker Manfred Kirchheimer is always a cause for celebration; with My Coffee with Jewish Friends, Kirchheimer uses a simple, humorous title as a screen for a serious and deeply thoughtful exploration of contemporary Jewish identity.

In a series of conversations, some one on one, others with long-married couples, all from various walks of life (college students, a female rabbi, a dentist, etc), Kirchheimer gently probes his subjects with tough questions on gender inequality, faith, secularism, the Holocaust, the rise in anti-Semitism, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and others. Their answers – honest, humorous, contradictory – gain a startling universality as the film moves along.

My Coffee is another wonderful, densely layered investigation from the director of such award-winning films as Stations of the Elevated (1981), We Were So Beloved (1985), Tall: The American Skyscraper and Louis Sullivan (2004) and Canners (2014); a portrait of what’s its like to be Jewish in these times.