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How an encounter with Guillermo del Toro led to NYC’s first Mexican Jewish Film Festival
(JTA) — When Deborah Koenigsberger Gutierrez attended a small cocktail reception with the celebrated Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro last December, she didn’t expect to leave with an idea for a synagogue fundraiser.
But in a conversation with del Toro and a few other guests at the event, which was in honor of the premiere of his latest feature, “Pinocchio,” the famed filmmaker made a remark that stuck with her.
“He said something that really hit my heart,” recalled Koenigsberger Gutierrez, the president of Tribeca Synagogue. “He said, ‘Every Mexican outside of Mexico is an ambassador of the culture of Mexico.’”
Koenigsberger Gutierrez, who was born in Mexico City, had been on the lookout for creative ways to engage young families at her congregation, something beyond a traditional silent auction and gala dinner. She landed on a program that would draw an audience and pay tribute to del Toro’s craft, and began organizing the synagogue’s first-ever Mexican Jewish Film Festival, which will begin on Sunday, April 2.
“I basically said to myself, ‘How can I make a big event that brings in people and also celebrates Mexican Jews?’” Koenigsberger Gutierrez said. “And everybody loves going to the movies.”
The festival will feature 10 films with English subtitles over the course of three days, all of which were directed, made, written or acted in by Mexican Jews. The Jews highlighted in the festival come from a variety of Jewish backgrounds, including Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Syrian, and the films span a variety of genres, including horror, comedy and drama.
In addition to movie screenings, the festival will feature Q&As with two of the directors: Guita Schyfter, who directed “Like a Bride,” a coming-of-age story about two young women in 1960s Mexico City; and Isaac Ezban, who directed two horror movies, “Evil Eye” and “The Similars.” It will also feature a performance from the Nashir! chorus, pop-up artisan shops in the social hall, coffee from Mexico’s Chiapas region and cocktails and kosher Mexican food from the restaurant Carlos & Gabby’s.
The film screenings will conclude on April 4, and the festival will host a final day of events on April 5, the eve of Passover, including a “bread party” where attendees can munch on leavened products traditionally prohibited on the holiday. Vendors will sell Mexican folk art and kosher Mexican cookies.
The Tribeca Synagogue, which until a decade ago was called the Synagogue for the Arts, often rents out its sanctuary space, and hosted the 2022 NYC Bicycle Film Festival in November. It can place a giant screen at the front of the sanctuary, turning it into a makeshift theater. All it took to organize the Mexican Jewish Film Festival, Koenigsberger Gutierrez said, was selecting the films and getting the rights to screen them (and in one case, subtitling one of the films, the 2008 drama “3:19,” in English for the first time ever.)
Other films screening at the festival include the 1955 comedy “The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz,” about a wannabe serial killer who keeps plotting murders but can’t quite execute any of them; “One for the Road,” a 2014 film about three octogenarian friends who take a trip together; and the 2007 comedy “My Mexican Shivah,” about a family dealing with their secrets being revealed as they mourn their patriarch.
Beyond her own synagogue community, which has fewer than 100 active memberships, Koenigsberger Gutierrez is expecting a diverse turnout for the festival. Jorge Islas Lopez, the Mexican consul general in New York, will give an address and is inviting Mexicans in New York to attend. The American Sephardi Federation and the Syrian Jewish group Kanisse have also partnered with the festival.
Koenigsberger Gutierrez hopes the films enable viewers to see beyond popular U.S. conceptions of Mexico on screen, which she says focus too much on violence fueled by drug cartels.
“We are not one genre,” Koenigsberger Gutierrez said. “We’re not only El Chapo and all these you know, drug dealers, and the things you see [in] Hollywood a lot. We are much more than that. The film festival is to celebrate Mexican Jews and their work.”
She added, “People tend to think that Jews look a certain way. And I can say that people think that, also, Mexicans look a certain way.”
When Koenigsberger Gutierrez came to the United States for her master’s degree eight years ago, she was surprised to see that people doubted her nationality.
“In Mexico, nobody ever questioned that I was Mexican,” she said. “There was no question. But when I got to America, people would be like, ‘You’re not really Mexican because you’re Jewish.’ And that was kind of like, really something I’ve never, never dealt with. I was like, ‘What do you mean? I’m 100% Mexican, I’m 100% Jewish.’ I’m Mexican and I’m Jewish.”
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US Intelligence Indicates China Preparing Weapons Shipment to Iran
The Pentagon building is seen in Arlington, Virginia, U.S. October 9, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
US intelligence indicates China is preparing to deliver new air defense systems to Iran within the next few weeks, CNN reported late on Friday, citing three people familiar with recent intelligence assessments.
The network said there are indications that Beijing is working to route the shipments through third countries to mask their origin.
The US State Department, the White House, the Chinese embassy in Washington and China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Beijing is preparing to transfer shoulder-fired anti-air missile systems known as MANPADs, CNN said, citing sources it did not name.
The US and Iran are set to hold high-level negotiations on Saturday in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, seeking ways to end their six-week-old war.
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US-Iran Talks Begin, Trump Says Hormuz Strait ‘Clearing’ Underway
Pakistani flags flutter near the Parliament House, as delegations from the United States and Iran are expected to hold high-stakes talks, in Islamabad, Pakistan, April 11, 2026. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro
US and Iranian negotiators held their highest-level talks in half a century on Saturday in Pakistan to try to end their war even as President Donald Trump said his military had sunk Tehran’s mine-layers and was clearing the Strait of Hormuz.
“We’re now starting the process of clearing out the Strait of Hormuz as a favor to Countries all over the World,” Trump posted, saying 28 Iranian mine-dropping vessels had been destroyed.
Iran’s state-affiliated Nournews called that “false news.”
Amid conflicting reports, Iranian state TV added that no US ships had crossed the strait, a crucial transit point for global energy supplies that Tehran has effectively blocked but Trump has vowed to reopen.
The waterway, which lies on Iran’s southern coast, was one of the main points on the agenda in Islamabad for the first direct US-Iranian talks in more than a decade and the highest-level discussions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Trump’s Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner flew in on Saturday and met Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi for two hours before a rest, according to a source from mediator Pakistan.
The Iranian delegation had arrived on Friday dressed in black in mourning for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and others killed in the six-week war. They carried shoes and bags of some students killed during the US bombing of a school next to a military compound, the Iranian government said.
“There were mood swings from the two sides and the temperature went up and down during the meeting,” said another Pakistani source of the first round of talks.
PROGRESS OF NEGOTIATIONS UNCLEAR
The war has sent global oil prices soaring, killed thousands of people and seen unprecedented hits on Gulf Arab states.
Amid conflicting versions from officials and media in both nations, the US and Iranian sides appeared to remain far apart.
Before the talks began, a senior Iranian source told Reuters the US had agreed to release frozen assets in Qatar and other foreign banks. But a US official swiftly denied that.
As well as release of assets abroad, Tehran is demanding control of the Strait of Hormuz, payment of war reparations and a ceasefire across the region including in Lebanon, according to Iranian state TV and officials.
Trump’s stated goals have varied during the campaign, but as a minimum he wants free passage for global shipping through the strait and the crippling of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program to ensure it cannot produce an atomic bomb.
US ally Israel, which joined the February 28 attacks on Iran that launched the war, has also been bombing Tehran-backed Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, killing nearly 2,000 people.
Israel and the US have said Lebanon is not part of the Iran-US ceasefire.
Mutual distrust is high.
“We will negotiate with our finger on the trigger,” Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said on state TV.
“While we are open to talks, we are also fully aware of the lack of trust; therefore, Iran’s diplomatic team is entering this process with maximum caution.”
Tehran’s agenda includes aiming to collect transit fees in the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for about 20 percent of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.
The biggest ever disruption there has fed inflation and slowed the global economy, with an impact expected to last for months even if negotiators succeed in reopening the strait.
Nevertheless, three Liberian- and Chinese-flagged supertankers did pass through the strait on Saturday, shipping data showed, marking what appeared to be the first vessels to exit the Gulf since last week’s US-Iran ceasefire.
STRIKES ON LEBANON
Strikes on southern Lebanon continued on Saturday morning, Lebanese state media said. Reuters reporters heard an Israeli surveillance drone flying over the capital Beirut from Friday night into the next morning and warplanes broke the sound barrier twice over the city.
Hezbollah announced it had conducted several military operations against Israeli positions on Saturday, both within Lebanese territory and in northern Israel.
Israeli and Lebanese officials plan talks in the US on Tuesday.
For the US-Iran talks, Islamabad, a city of just over 2 million people, was under unprecedented lockdown with thousands of paramilitary personnel and army troops on the streets.
Pakistan’s mediating role is a remarkable transformation for a nation that was a diplomatic outcast a year ago.
“This was a world war that Pakistan stopped. It played a big role and we should appreciate it,” said dry cleaner Nasir Khan Abbasi at a market in Islamabad. “I really like this and I feel great that Pakistan’s name is shining in the world.”
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Middle East War to Cut Growth, Deliver Cascading Impact, World Bank Chief Says
FILE PHOTO: World Bank President Ajay Banga gives remarks during a forum held at the Atlantic Council building in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 7, 2026. REUTERS/Aaron Schwartz/File Photo
The war in the Middle East will have a cascading impact on the global economy, even if a ceasefire announced by US President Donald Trump takes hold, World Bank President Ajay Banga told Reuters in an interview on Friday.
And the damage will be far deeper if the ceasefire fails and the conflict escalates, he said.
Banga on Tuesday said global growth could be lowered by 0.3 to 0.4 percentage point in a baseline scenario, with an early end to the war, and by as much as 1 percentage point if it endures. Inflation could increase by 200 to 300 basis points, with a much higher impact – of up to 0.9 percentage point – if the war continues, he said.
The World Bank’s baseline estimate now projects growth in emerging markets and developing economies of 3.65% in 2026, compared to 4% in October, dropping as low as 2.6% in an adverse scenario with a longer-lasting war. Inflation in those countries was now forecast to hit 4.9% in 2026, up from the previous estimate of 3%. The extreme scenario could see inflation rising as high as 6.7%, according to estimates viewed by Reuters.
The war, which has killed thousands of people across the Middle East, has sent the price of oil up by 50% while disrupting supplies of oil, gas, fertilizer, helium and other goods, as well as tourism and air travel.
The two-week ceasefire announced by Trump appears tenuous, with Israel and Iran continuing strikes. Iran said on Friday that blocked Iranian assets must be released and a ceasefire must take hold in Lebanon before US-Iran talks, scheduled for Saturday in Pakistan, can proceed. Trump said that US warships were being reloaded with ammunition in case the talks failed.
“The question really is, does this current peace and the negotiations that are going to be happening this weekend – will this lead to a lasting peace and then a reopening of the Strait (of Hormuz)?” said Banga. “If it doesn’t lead to that, and if conflict were to break out again, would that have an even larger impact, or longer-term impact on energy infrastructure?”
Banga said the world’s largest development bank was already in discussions with some developing countries, including small island states with no natural energy resources, about tapping funds from existing programs under “crisis response windows.”
The World Bank’s crisis toolkit allows countries to tap previously approved but not yet disbursed funds without additional board approvals, increasing flexibility.
But Banga said the bank was cautioning countries to avoid setting up energy subsidies that they could not afford, which would trigger even bigger problems in the future.
“I worry about making sure that they can come through this crisis, targeting what they need to do, but not doing anything that further deteriorates that fiscal space,” he said.
Many developing countries also have high debt levels and interest rates remain high, which constrains their ability to borrow money to fund measures to respond to the jump in energy costs and other goods caused by the war.
The crisis has put a fresh spotlight on the need for countries to diversify energy supplies and boost self-sufficiency, Banga said. The World Bank last June ended a longstanding ban on funding nuclear energy projects as part of a push to meet rising electricity needs.
Nigeria, which had long faced problems, stood to benefit from a $20 billion investment made by the Dangote Group in refineries, which had actually increased output during the war, and was now supplying aviation fuel to neighboring countries.
“Nigeria should be breathing a sigh of relief. They’ve built up the ability to have energy security for themselves through that huge investment,” he said. “It’s actually a really good example of the right thing being done in terms of energy self-sufficiency for them, but also for their neighbors.”
The World Bank is also working closely with Mozambique, another African country, to expand its energy production capabilities in both natural gas and hydropower.
The World Bank had many energy products in the pipeline, Banga said, noting that talks were under way with some countries looking to extend the life of their fleets of nuclear reactors, and others keen to move into nuclear power.
“If you don’t get nuclear and hydro and geothermal going at scale, along with wind and solar, they will end up doing more with traditional fuels, and nobody really wants that,” he said.