Soda
Preceded by the short film Unholy
January 31 @ 7:00 pm
Magic Lantern Theatre
25 W Main Ave
Spokane, 99201
This screening is sponsored by Temple Beth Shalom.
This pairing confronts the weight of survival, judgment, and belonging within families and communities shaped by trauma. From an intimate Passover Seder marked by illness and vulnerability to a postwar neighborhood grappling with love, loyalty, and the moral complexities of Holocaust memory, these films ask how compassion persists amid pain, secrecy, and impossible choices.
Soda
Eva, a beautiful seamstress, arrives with her daughter in an Israeli working-class neighborhood in 1954. Shalom Gottlieb, a former partisan leader and current factory foreman, falls for Eva, who offers him a chance at happiness and a life filled with beauty and laughter. But rumors of Eva’s past as a kapo during the Holocaust shake the community. Shalom’s choice to be with Eva now means not only betraying his family but also his fellow partisans – and his duty to uncover her secret. Prof. Mark Drumbl, the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor at Washington and Lee University’s School of Law and author of the 2018 article “The Kapo on Film: Tragic Perpetrators and Imperfect Victims,” will provide a brief, prerecorded commentary on Soda after the screening.
Unholy
Unholy follows Noa, a young adult with a complex gastrointestinal disorder, as she attends her family’s Passover Seder for the first time since being put on a feeding tube. There she is confronted by pushy family members, malfunctioning medical devices, and a room full of food she cannot eat.
