Hester Street

Joan Micklin Silver’s remarkable feature debut is a vivid, lovingly detailed evocation of the late-nineteenth-century Jewish Lower East Side built around a luminous, Academy Award–nominated performance from Carol Kane as Gitl, a young woman from Eastern Europe who arrives in New York to join her husband Yankel (Steven Keats) who has already emigrated. While Yankel, who now goes by Jake, has quickly acclimated to life in America—and even begun an affair with a dancer—Gitl initially struggles to assimilate. As she attempts to find her place within an unfamiliar culture, Gitl must find a way to become a victor instead of a victim.