Films this week 2/20/2026 to 2/26/26
by Gary Palmucci | 20th February 2026 | Gary's Corner
Oscar nominees, personal appearances, holdovers (one nearing the six-month mark)…eleven films shoehorned into this weekend’s New Plaza Cinema schedule.
Michael Jacobsohn, one of our filmmakers in residence and bi-monthly short films curator, is reprising his poignant documentary The Cornelia Street Cafe in Exile on Sunday, and will be joined after the show by its subject, the now-legendary cafe’s founder Robin Hirsch.
We’ve had a string of sold out shows on this one, so proceed accordingly.
Already sold out is Saturday’s screening of Rebel With a Clause; we’re working with semi-colon mavens Brandt Johnson and Ellen Jovin on an encore in the coming weeks – watch our newly-improved web calendar for updates.
Documentarian Aviva Kempner is one of our foremost – and eclectic -chroniclers of the American Jewish experience, in docs including Yo-Hoo Mrs Goldberg, Life and Times of Hank Greenberg and A Pocketful of Miracles (the latter two we played here). Her 2015 film Rosenwald , on the life of Sears Roebuck founder and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald who built over 5000 schools for African American children , was recently upgraded to digital and she’ll be joining us on Sunday for some always-quotable Q&A.
After a great Christmas season run, where for a while NPC generated the film’s top US arthouse box office gross, we’ll be doing a final screening of Ralph Fiennes in The Choral.
SHTTL, which opened here on October 3, is nearing that six-month mark, surpassing even Bad Shabbos, and as usual lead actor Moshe Lobel will be on hand.
Co-director Lance Kramer will be here following Sunday afternoon’s screening of the riveting documentary Holding Liat.
Last weekend’s French crowdpleaser A Private Life, starring Jodie Foster, Daniel Auteuil and Virginie Efira, will be back, along with Oscar nominees Sentimental Value, Cutting Through Rocks and Mr Nobody versus Putin, as well as an Oscar shortlister that just keeps drawing, the Jordanian heartbreaker All That’s Left of You.
Check out the article on it in last week’s NY Times.