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50 miles north of New York City, the town of Monroe is a micro-cosm for a hyper-partisan and divided nation as a land-dispute between an ultra-orthodox Hassidic sect and their secular neighbors erupts into a turf war.

LOGLINE

City of Joel follows an ultra-orthodox Hasidic sect as they wage a turf war with their secular neighbors. In the suburbs just 50 miles north of New York City, the Satmar sect has thrived in a 1.1 square mile religious haven called Kiryas Joel, or City of Joel, for over 40 years. With some of the highest rates of marriage, birth, and religious observance in the US, their success has come at a price as Kiryas Joel is no longer big enough to hold its 22,000 members. When developers come up with a plan to double the size of the village to support this growth, their secular neighbors fight back, believing that the expansion will disrupt their own lives, harm the environment, and tilt the balance of local political power. With unprecedented access and in the tradition of rigorous observational documentaries, the documentary presents the people on all sides of a conflict - from religious zealots to dissidents, from rabbis to people who doubt their own faith as they struggle to find their place in the City of Joel.

SYNOPSIS

I started making this film because I was profoundly curious about New York’s fast-growing Hassidic communities, of which I both felt a kinship and an ignorance. My grandparents fled the brutal anti-Semitism of Europe in the early 20th Century, crossing the Atlantic in hopes of giving their children a better life. Those children, my parents, worked their way into the American dream. And I am of the paradoxical third generation: while many of us have fulfilled our familial hopes of making it in America, in doing so, we have often drifted from the faith of our ancestors. According to a nationwide 2013 Pew study, nearly 25% of Jewish people in America now identify as having “no religious belief.” Against this tide of assimilation, one group of American Jews is growing exponentially: the ultra-Orthodox. I wanted to find out what drives these communities and how they fit into the United States. I discovered that in one of the fastest growing Hassidic communities - Kiryas Joel - the community embodies some of the most urgent questions about democracy, civil liberties, religious freedom and women’s rights in America today. How can we reconcile conflicts between the freedom to practice one’s faith and the constitutional prohibition on government-sponsored religion? How do increasingly divided neighbors still maintain their community?

The 25,000 members of the Satmar sect who live in this community want to separate themselves from mainstream American culture, strictly follow the Torah and wait for the Messiah. But their growth puts them on a path towards a culture clash.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Citizens in the neighboring village say the Satmar’s annexation plan is simply a power grab dressed up as religious freedom. The land battle escalates and the community splinters into even more factions – dissident Hassids, refugees, secular Jews who are caught in the middle, and the town becomes a micro-cosm for the hyper-partisan divides that run throughout the United States. Each side creates their own narratives – and their own facts – to paint themselves as the victim and the opponent as the aggressor.

Alliances are made. Votes are cast. Religious dogma is a way of life. Communication is replaced by distrust and accusation as each group takes a bunker mentality that paints the other as the villain.

With unprecedented access, we go inside the lives of people on all sides of this issue and learn about their motivations and fears. We watch as gender equality, the separation of church and state, and on-line smear campaigns all become flashpoints in this all-American culture clash.

KIRYAS JOEL

Jesse Sweet, director, is a two-time Emmy-winner. He is currently directing episodes of a new ESPN series that is being written and executive produced by Alex Gibney. Previously he has produced and directed episodes of Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain (CNN) and Years of Living Dangerously - the Showtime series about the global impact of climate change, executive produced by James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger. His work has appeared on Viceland, HBO and PBS.

DIRECTOR BIO

CREATIVE TEAM

DAVID GORDON GREEN (Executive Producer) is the acclaimed director and producer of films including George Washington, All the Real Girls, Snow Angels, Pineapple Express, Your Highness, Joe, Manglehorn, Our Brand is Crisis and the HBO series Eastbound and Down. In 2013, he received the Silver Bear Award for Best Director at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival for Prince Avalanche. He is currently in post-production on Stronger starring Jake Gyllenhal.

HANNAH OLSON (Producer) is from Minnesota. She’s worked on a number of films for PBS including several seasons of Finding Your Roots with Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Italian Americans, Into the Amazon: Theodore Roosevelt’s Journey into the Unknown, and Lidia Bastianich’s Lidia Celebrates America. She’s been interested in American utopias for as long as she can remember.

LUCIAN READ (Cinematographer/Co-Producer) is an Emmy award-winning cinematographer, producer and director whose credits include the 2013 Sundance premiered 99%, the 2014 Showtime documentary series Years of Living Dangerously, and the 2015 Polk award-winning Weather Channel documentary The Real Death Valley. Read is also the co-creator of the forthcoming documentary series America Divided - an investigation of inequality in America which will premiere on EPIX in September 2016.

AMANDA LARSON (Editor/Co-Producer) worked on the feature documentary King Georges (2015: Full Frame, Strange Than Fiction, SIFF, IFFBoston, AFI Docs, Big Sky and more; distr. Sundance Selects) and Matthew Porterfield’s narrative short, Take What You Can Carry (2015: Lincoln Center’s The Art of the Real, The Berlinale and more). Her work has also screened at SFDoc Fest, Traverse City FF, Maryland International FF, Outfest, Frameline, Miami International FF, and the London International Documentary Festival; as well as theatrical screenings and broadcast screenings on PBS’s Independent Lens and BET.

CREATIVE TEAM

MICHAEL MONTES (Composer) writes continuously for films, album projects and all other media. Recent projects include: Always Shine, King Georges, Applesauce, and Wild Canaries. He lives in Brooklyn. He has no pets.

SAM RUSSELL (Additional Cinematographer) Sam Russell is a cinematographer and filmmaker who’s last film, By Blood, screened at festivals around the country and is slated to broadcast on PBS. He has served as director of photography on the series Finding Your Roots, Makers: Women In America, Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies for Ken Burns, and the feature Far From The Tree for Participant Media, among others.

MCKENNA KEMP (Associate Producer/Graphic Designer) is a Brooklyn-based designer and art director.

DAVID MYERS (Adviser) is the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Professor of Jewish History at UCLA Department of History.