Decades after the Holocaust, award-winning American filmmaker Yoav Potash (Crime After Crime, Sundance Film Festival) unearths the haunting mysteries of a small Polish town where people of two different faiths lived side by side for centuries.
At its heart, the film focuses on two individuals who lived through the peril of World War II and its aftermath: Yaacov Goldstein, a Holocaust survivor whose harrowing story exposes both the heights of human compassion and the depths of cruelty and Pelagia Radecka, an eyewitness to when five Jews were murdered, not by the Nazis but by her own Polish neighbors, six months after the end of World War II.
Breaking decades of silence for this film, they share secrets they have held for a lifetime, and their experiences are brought to life in stunning animated sequences, enriched by artful touches of magical realism. Together, their accounts illuminate the darkest chapter of Poland’s history.
As attempts to rewrite this history in favor of a more politically convenient narrative gain momentum, Among Neighbors offers a powerful counterpoint. Revealing a tale of love and murder spanning seven decades, the film boldly asserts that true patriotism lies in facing history honestly, no matter how painful the truths may be. As life imitates art, political extremists and historical revisionists in Poland, including its president, have now called for the film itself to be banned.
Post screening panel featuring director, Yoav Potash in conversation with Louise Steinman. This program is in partnership with Jewish Story Partners.
YOAV POTASH is an award-winning writer and filmmaker. He produced and directed the Sundance premiere documentary Crime After Crime, a New York Times Critics’ Pick which won two dozen awards and helped change domestic violence law in multiple US states. Crime After Crime is now streaming on Amazon Prime. Yoav also directed the San Francisco IndieFest Jury Prize-winning documentary Food Stamped, and his film A Great Big Secret was one of only two short films to screen at Lincoln Center as part of the 2025 New York Jewish Film Festival. Yoav is an alumnus of UC Berkeley, where he received the university’s top prize in creative writing. Today he joins us to discuss the making of Among Neighbors, a breathtaking film in which the accounts of a Holocaust survivor and an eyewitness to the murder of Jews in postwar Poland come to life through stunning hand-drawn animation. The film has won 14 awards to date, and the office of Poland's ultra-nationalist president has attempted to ban the film.
LOUISE STEINMAN is a writer, artist, and literary curator. Her essays have been widely published; she is the author of three books, including, The Crooked Mirror: A Memoir of Polish-Jewish Reconciliation (Beacon Press; KARTA, Warsaw). She was the founder and longtime curator of the ALOUD literary series at the Los Angeles Public Library and co-director of the Los Angeles Institute for Humanities at USC. She is currently co-curator for the PEN World Voices Festival 2026. www.louisesteinman.com