Four decades ago, a community of Hasidim fled the cost and crowds of Brooklyn to create Kiryas Joel (City of Joel) in upstate New York. This thriving, ultra-Orthodox village of 22,000 had lived peacefully with its neighbors in the pastoral town of Monroe until Kiryas Joel sought to double its geographic footprint to keep up with its population. Emmy-winning filmmaker Jesse Sweet was given unprecedented access to follow the clash of cultures as tensions grew between the politically-powerful Kiryas Joel residents and their secular neighbors in a beautiful documentary that raises important questions about the separation of church and state, the balance of rights and whether a once-powerless minority can become too powerful. In partnership with the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
