Hestor Street (1974)

Gitl (Carol Kane) has just arrived in America from Russia with her son. She has come to meet her husband, Jake (Steven Keats), who has been in the States for some time and is comfortably settled. While Gitl struggles to find her place in this country, she clashes with Jake, who has fully embraced their new homeland. Directed by Joan Micklin Silver.

“Another revelation is Joan Micklin Silver’s Hester Street (1975), based on a nineteenth-century novella. Beautifully realized in black-and-white with a blend of wry humor and real yearning, its clear-eyed portrait of Jewish immigrants in New York’s Lower East Side conveys the community disruption wrought by the conflicting pull of tradition and assimilation.” Carmen Gray for The Village Voice.

Hester Street is presented by Congregation Beth Israel