Deborah Kahan Kolb

Filmmaker and professor Pearl Gluck’s provocative latest dramatic short film centers on Malke, a Holocaust survivor and sex-ed teacher who has been leading a secret life for decades: performing slam poetry on the Lower East Side. Castles in the Sky features commanding performances from actor Lynn Cohen, who died in 2020, and poet Venus Thrash, who died in 2021.

Write Me, a poetry film, follows an older woman who joins other survivors in reclaiming the histories tattooed on their bodies. The film is adapted from and driven by an award-winning poem, "After Auschwitz," written by Deborah Kahan Kolb.