Beverly Hills, May 12, 2026 —The Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival opened its 20th anniversary edition with a gala that balanced Hollywood sparkle with a clear sense of purpose: honoring Rabbi Marvin Hier and premiering The Hollywood Rabbi, a documentary portrait of the Simon Wiesenthal Center founder whose work has made Holocaust education and the language of tolerance part of Los Angeles’ civic DNA.
TAGLINE!The scene inside the Saban Theatre felt like a reunion as much as a premiere: a red carpet, a dessert-and-wine reception, and a crowd eager to celebrate an Angeleno institution-builder as well as the festival itself. Longtime festival Founder/Director Hilary Helstein kept the evening moving with the assured pacing of a producer who understands that community events still need showmanship. When Arnold Schwarzenegger—Hier’s friend for more than four decades and a key presence in the film—took the stage to introduce the program, the room leaned in. Their rapport, equal parts gratitude and good-natured teasing, underscored one of the documentary’s central ideas: Hier’s ability to translate moral urgency into relationships that open doors, raise funds, and rally public attention.
Directed by Jon Kean and produced by Brad Krevoy and Susie Krevoy, The Hollywood Rabbi traces Hier’s arc from the Lower East Side to the pulpit in Vancouver and, ultimately, to Los Angeles—where a postwar visit to European Holocaust sites fueled his determination to create the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Tolerance.
The film’s best passages are brisk and intimate: family history, snapshots of a young rabbi with improbable ambition, and the gradual realization that “tolerance” can be more than a slogan when it becomes a place people actually walk through. Celebrity appearances are plentiful, but the documentary is most persuasive when it shows the practical mechanics of Hier’s leadership—phone calls returned, alliances built, and the relentless follow-through required to turn a vision into a landmark..
The guest list mirrored the film’s thesis about bridges—between civic life, entertainment, and communal memory. Comedian Elon Gold warmed up the crowd, while familiar faces and local leaders circulated on the carpet, including Melissa Rivers (in town for We Met at Grossinger’s), Actor, Jon Voight, (Star of LAJFF Selection “Monument”), California State Senator Ben Allen, Jim Burke, CEO of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and Beverly Hills Mayor Craig Corman. Hier and his wife, Malka, were surrounded by children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren—an intergenerational tableau that gave the evening emotional ballast amid the flashbulbs.
As an opening-night selection, The Hollywood Rabbi works not only as a tribute but as a mission statement for LAJFF’s anniversary year: cinema as a forum where history, identity, and civic responsibility can share the same spotlight. If the gala occasionally leaned into hagiography, the larger takeaway was hard to dismiss—Hier’s life offers a case study in what sustained advocacy looks like, especially when the headlines make compassion feel like an endangered resource. With the festival continuing through May 19, the kickoff set an inviting tone: celebratory, community-minded, and unafraid to let a movie night carry the weight of memory.
