Chaya Amor

Filmmaker and professor Pearl Gluck’s provocative latest dramatic short film centers on Malke, a Holocaust survivor and sex-ed teacher who has been leading a secret life for decades: performing slam poetry on the Lower East Side. Castles in the Sky features commanding performances from actor Lynn Cohen, who died in 2020, and poet Venus Thrash, who died in 2021.

Filmmaker and professor Pearl Gluck’s provocative latest dramatic short film centers on Malke, a Holocaust survivor and sex-ed teacher who has been leading a secret life for decades: performing slam poetry on the Lower East Side. Castles in the Sky features commanding performances from actor Lynn Cohen, who died in 2020, and poet Venus Thrash, who died in 2021.

Set against the dramatic backdrop of the beginning of the full-scale war in 2022 Ukraine, and filmed entirely in Ukraine under bombs, air raid sirens, and military curfew – Sofia, a young Ukrainian singer trying to make it in L.A., travels to Kyiv for the first time in four years just as the war breaks out, forcing her to make an impossible choice between career and home, safety and love.

An anthology series exploring the aftermath of the October 7 attacks in Israel, where Hamas militants killed and took hostages. It portrays stories of love, bravery, endurance, and grief arising from the senseless violence.