Skip to main content
Between the Temples film image; man sittings concerned at a table with a red flower in a vase on it

Between the Temples

This event has passed

Ben (Jason Schwartzman), a cantor in a small, upstate New York community, is suffering from a crisis in faith after the recent passing of his wife. He’s living with both is mother, and his step-mother, in the basement. On top of it all he’s also lost his singing voice. A chance encounter in a bar with his former elementary school music teacher, Carla (Carol Kane), turns his life on its side. Carla asks him to let her take his Bat Mitzvah class. He’s not sure, but something is already starting up for him.

Nathan Silver’s gentle screwball comedy—cowritten by C Mason Wells—is, as Manohla Dargis put it in the New York Times, “a coming-of-middle-age” story. It’s caring film about people who are realizing they still haven’t got everything figured out. Ben is lost, and sometimes tetchy, but he’s not as alone as he imagines.

A soulful, scathing Jewish American love story.

New Yorker

Delightfully tetchy… Silver has an appreciation for life’s ironies and likes putting a topspin on his comedy. The movie is consistently funny, but its humor tends to be fairly gentle because it’s rooted in human behavior rather than in condescending, judgmental ideas about such behavior.

Manohla Dargis, New York Times

A spiky, hilarious, and thoroughly unorthodox screwball comedy.

David Ehrlich, Indiewire

Director

Nathan Silver

Cast

Jason Schwartzman, Carol Kane, Dolly de Leon, Caroline Aaron, Robert Smigel, Madeline Weinstein

Credits
Country of Origin

USA

Year

2024

Language

English

19+
111 min

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits

Screenwriter

Nathan Silver, C. Mason Wells

Cinematography

Sean Price Williams

Editor

John Magary

Production Design

Madeline Sadowski

Also Playing

Sinners

Dir. Ryan Coogler
137 min

This year's unexpected box office sleeper is that rare beast, a genre movie full of bold invention and surprise. We are in Mississippi in the early 1930s, and the opening of a new blues joint on the edge of town is the signal for all hell to break out.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

The Life of Chuck

Dir. Mike Flanagan
111 min

The winner of the coveted Audience Award at TIFF last year, The Life of Chuck keeps us guessing about what it's up to and where it's going... Trust us, it's a keeper.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Graduate

Dir. Mike Nichols
106 min

In The Graduate Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman, 30 playing 20 with masterly understatement) comes home from college and is surprised to be seduced by the wife of his father's business partner, Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft).

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

blur: To the End

Dir. Toby L.
108 min

Now in their late 50s, Britpopsters blur (of Song 2 fame) do a celebratory lap of Great Britain culminating in their first ever Wembley Stadium show in this appealing observational doc. A companion piece to the concert film Live at Wembley Stadium.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre