31st Seattle Jewish Film Festival: Roots+Reels

Presented by Seattle Jewish Film Festival

31st Seattle Jewish Film Festival: Roots+Reels runs March 14-29 in theaters and virtually
Join us to celebrate more than three decades of powerful storytelling, community and culture with this year’s “Roots + Reels” Film Festival, exploring how rootedness in family, faith, traditions, spiritual and cultural practices can fill our cups and sustain us in trying times.

FANTASY LIFE: A young man in crisis becomes a nanny for an upscale NYC family (Amanda Peet, Alessandro Nivola) and shakes up the couple’s complex relationship.

ZELENSKY: President Volodymyr Zelensky has become the iconic symbol of modern Ukraine. This French documentary shines a light on his lesser-known journey from popular entertainer to world leader. 

Buy Tickets & Passes

FANTASY LIFE: Presented with an unusual opportunity by his therapist (Judd Hirsch) and his receptionist wife (Andrea Martin), frustrated out-of-work Sam (played by the film’s writer-director Matthew Shear) takes a babysitting job for $300 a night for a wealthy couple. Watching their three daughters presents Sam with some challenges—but not as much as managing his employers’ rocky relationship. David (Alessandro Nivola), a rock bassist and childhood acquaintance of Sam’s, and his wife Dianne (Amanda Peet) live off a trust fund as they pursue their creative passions: she is an actress whose career has been interrupted by motherhood and David’s rocker mentality is not as unhinged as he would like. Their marriage is steps away from destruction—and Sam’s pleasant demeanor and sympathetic ear reveal the cracks that bring the household crumbling down.

While Shear’s characterizations come from a long line of anxiety-plagued Jewish protagonists, Fantasy Life succeeds as a dramatic portrait of people struggling in midlife with anxiety and as a comedy by injecting an undercurrent of absurd humor. Everyone in his multigenerational cast of great Jewish performers gets an opportunity to shine, but in the final scenes, it is the nuanced work of Peet, marking her return to the big screen after a decade-long hiatus, that steals the show. Winner of Best Narrative Feature and a Best Actress Jury Prize at SXSW 2025.

ZELENSKY:
President Volodymyr Zelensky (one of only three Jewish world leaders) has become the iconic symbol of Ukraine. His choice to remain in the country when the Russians invaded in 2022 changed the expected course of the conflict. Codirected by documentary filmmaker Yves Jeuland, French journalist Ariane Chemin and historian Lisa Vapné, Zelensky provides rare access to archival photos and video footage, plus interviews with people who have known, worked and performed with Zelensky throughout his kaleidoscopic life and colorful careers.

Growing up in 1980s Ukraine, young Zelensky (a hyperactive kid) was indoctrinated by his Soviet communist education—an unusual background given his resistance to Russia now—but then he discovered performing, traveling throughout Russia in a comedy troupe before returning to Kyiv to as a successful entertainer.

Through astonishing footage and candid interviews, including with Zelensky himself, Zelensky lays out the path of his double metamorphosis: shedding both his communist and comedy backgrounds to become the president of independent Ukraine. The synergistic partnership of a filmmaker, journalist and historian yields a not-to-be-missed portrait of an often-seen but barely known public figure ubiquitous on the world stage.