At the Boulder Jewish Film Festival, the projector will roll, the popcorn will pop and the post-screening Q&As will veer into debates about character arcs and camera work.

But outside of the Dairy Arts Center, the world isn’t exactly a cushy arts hub with world-class popcorn on tap. More than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military offensive following the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, according to reports from the Gaza Health Ministry on Oct. 1.

Closer to home, Jewish communities also still face violence, including the horrific anti-semitic terror attack in Boulder at a protest in June on the Pearl Street Mall that left one woman, who was burned in the attack, dead less than a month later.

The 2025 Boulder Jewish Film Festival (BJFF) arrives in the midst of this chaos, where memory and identity keep elbowing their way into the headlines. But inside the Dairy Arts Center, festival director Kathryn Bernheimer is determined to remind audiences that the lineup isn’t only about grief. Thrillers, comedies, even a Western or two are sprinkled in, which is proof that the Jewish Film Festival in Boulder can still make room for laughs and a little lightness, even when the outside world feels like anything but.

“I think our focus is on healing,”  said Bernheimer. “We have to understand how Jewish people are trying to heal, and the nation is trying to heal, and that’s a much better conversation to be having than a more politicized one. I made a deliberate choice to show something that is really about the need for healing, and that has a huge amount of sympathy and heart and will hopefully foster greater understanding rather than be polarizing.”

The festival opens on Oct. 26 with a screening of “Yaniv,” a breezy comedy about underground card games that has already made the rounds at more than 60 Jewish film festivals. Directed by Amnon Carmi and co-written with Ben Ducoff, who also stars in the film, “Yaniv” follows a Bronx high school teacher who hatches a scheme to bankroll his school musical by infiltrating a Hasidic Jewish community card game, with disastrous and hilarious results.

Because the film revolves around the Israeli card game Yaniv (an Israeli card game similar to Rummy), screenings often double as a chance for audiences to learn and play it themselves. The fast-paced game is built around drawing and discarding cards to lower your hand’s point value, with players trying to call “Yaniv” before anyone else does. At BJFF, co-writer and the film’s star Ben Ducoff will be on hand to host a lobby card party between the afternoon screenings.

Opening night continues with “Midas Man,” a glossy British biopic about Beatles manager Brian Epstein. Often called the “fifth Beatle,” Epstein was the gay, Jewish entrepreneur whose instincts and style helped transform four scruffy Liverpool kids into a global phenomenon.

The festival closes on Nov. 2 with “Swedishkayt: Yidlife Crisis in Stockholm,” a comedy-documentary hybrid from Canadian duo Eli Batalion and Jamie Elman. The film follows the pair, known for their irreverent web series “YidLife Crisis,” as they discover a surprising pocket of Jewish culture in Sweden, where Yiddish is even recognized as an official language.

“The film is unusual because it is a documentary, but also a comedy,” Bernheimer said. “Documentaries can be inspiring, but they are rarely funny. This one is very entertaining and also very edifying.”

The screening will roll straight into a Swedish-themed party, complete with ABBA on the playlist and a spread of Scandinavian food. Boulder-based baker Katarina Schare of Hävenly Bakery will join as the evening’s guest, bringing her Swedish breads for a reception aptly named “Smorgasbord.”

Unlike in past years, Bernheimer didn’t program the lineup alone. A newly formed advisory committee of longtime attendees previewed contenders and offered feedback throughout the process. The group helped select the community centerpiece, “The Ring,” and their input also shaped other picks, including “Yaniv” and “Swedishkayt.”

“It was very valuable to me to have people responding to different films and hearing what they thought,” Bernheimer said. “That really helped me make a lot of decisions about films that I selected.”

Beyond the openers and centerpiece, the lineup offers no shortage of conversation starters. “Tatami” comes from the unprecedented collaboration of an Iranian and an Israeli filmmaker, a suspenseful sports thriller set at the World Judo Championships.

“It is very suspenseful and very important, both because of the story it tells and because of the collaboration behind it,” Bernheimer said.

From there, the festival veers into more raw territory. “Of Dogs and Men” was filmed at Kibbutz Nir Oz in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, blending a fictional search for a missing dog with the testimony of survivors.

“She’s really looking for hope… It’s about resilience and healing, not carnage,” Bernheimer explained.

Other films include “Guns and Moses,” a Western-style thriller about a rabbi debating whether to defend his congregation; “Riefenstahl and The Plunderer,” interrogations of propaganda and stolen art; “Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse,” a portrait of the “Maus” graphic novel creator; “Bliss,” a drama rooted in Israel’s Mizrahi community; and “Charles Grodin: Rebel with a Cause,” chronicling the actor and humanitarian. Two international shorts programs round out the schedule.

If the films spark debate, the festival doubles down with talkbacks after every screening. Bernheimer insists they’re not lectures, but genuine exchanges: “Audiences can share their thoughts, argue, and compare what they took away. That conversation deepens the impact of the film,” she said.

Guest speakers this year include Jim Vacca, a retired Boulder Valley educator and comics scholar who has taught Spiegelman’s “Maus” and led courses on comic books and Jewish imagination, and University of Colorado anthropologist Paul Shankman, a Holocaust scholar, as well as others.

At the Boulder Jewish Film Festival, healing might look like a card game in the lobby, a Swedish bread party, or a spirited debate about judo ethics. It might look like tears, or laughs, or someone loudly mispronouncing “Mizrahim” during the Q&A. Either way, it gives the people of Boulder a chance to do what they do best: observe art, internalize it, and find a way to spin it into connection.

The 13th annual Boulder Jewish Film Festival runs Oct. 26 through Nov. 2 at the Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder. Screenings take place in the Grace Gamm Theater, with showtimes ranging from afternoon matinees to evening features. Tickets are $16, plus a 15% Dairy service fee, and go on sale on Sunday at thedairy.org.