Lookalike contests, “Hot Frosty”-inspired tales and Larry David playing himself — these are some of the themes that emerged across the nearly 100 entries for Hey Alma’s Sixth Annual Hanukkah Movie Pitch Contest.
We so enjoyed reading all of your ideas, and frankly can’t believe we were able to select the 9 finalists we present to you today. From queer age-gap relationship drama to revenge-fueled time travel to Hanukkah hockey romance to a royal mohel, these movie pitches cover a lot of ground.
As always, the competition was fierce this year. We had to turn away inspired concepts like “Hot Rabbis to Go” by Betsy Aldredge, a story about two hot rabbis played by Adam Brody and Andrew Garfield vying for one woman’s heart; “Everybody Wants This” by Jan Greenfield, which begins, “Set during a few days of Hanukkah, two Jewish women — Rebecca and Esther — embark on a spontaneous girls’ trip to Palm Springs. After years of feeling like supporting characters in someone else’s story, they decide this year, they’re taking center stage;” and Ben AG Seret’s “Nune: Hannukiah,” wherein Paul Adreideles seeks revenge against House Hannukarkonnen.
These ideas receive an honorable mention from the Hey Alma team for being joyful, a little silly and a lot on-trend.
But only you, the Hey Alma audience, can pick the winner of this year’s contest.
Now’s your chance to vote for your favorite idea — which, again, will absolutely not be made into an actual movie, but will be made into a fun digital poster at least. Once you’ve read through them all, you can vote here. Voting will close on Wednesday, Dec. 18 at 5 p.m. ET. So get voting!!
In alphabetical order:
“A Great Murder Happened Here”
by Stephanie Levy
Pasadena, California, 1973. Esther Ritter (Kat Dennings), the unsung heroine of CalTech’s physics program, is inches away from unlocking the secret to time travel when an attempted assault by department chairman Horace Fern (Eli Roth) rocks her world. A panel of her (male) peers blames her for the attack and expels her from the program, but not before she sneaks her work off campus. When Esther cracks the code to time travel on the first night of Hanukkah, she knows her first destination.
Bethulia, Israel, 600 BCE. Judith (Rachel Weisz) raises the severed head of Holofernes for all to see. As the blood drips down her arm, Judith spots a strange woman in the back of the tent. Esther invites Judith to join her in the present as her partner in vengeance, and Judith is all too happy to oblige.
Together, Esther and Judith embark on a bloody rampage against the misogynists that wronged her, using Esther’s childhood dreidel to determine the fate of each victim. What horrors await those who roll:
Shin: Walter (Jonah Hill), the privileged idiot who voted to expel Esther with the hopes of stealing her research.
Nun: Laura (Elizabeth Berkley), Horace’s long-time secretary who turned a blind eye to his behavior.
Hay: Christopher (Zach Braff), a man convinced of his ally status because he abstained from Esther’s expulsion hearing and promised to “take care of her” once her fate was sealed.
Gimmel: Horace. Judith prepares to do what she does best, with a gruesome assist from Esther to make it truly Great.
Don’t miss this grindhouse comedy/horror in the vein of “Kill Bill” meets “Time After Time.”
“Gimmel a Break!”
by Gennie Gorback
Tovah (Mila Kunis) is an overworked single mother and marketing manager for a Jewish publishing house. She begrudgingly accepts the job as Hanukkah Mom for her daughter’s 4th grade class because they’re the only Jewish family in the school, and the quirky, lovable and woke teacher (John Legend) wants to keep his holiday lessons authentic.
Tovah goes all in and prepares a very thorough, but very dry, slide deck about the history of Hanukkah for the kids. But — Oh Shin — a week before the presentation, a new kid joins the class, along with his wannabe cantor single father Noah (Jack Black), who begs to help Tovah liven up the Hanukkah lesson.
Tovah wants Nun of it, but when the shamash of love ignites Tovah’s hanukkiah of loneliness, she realizes, *what the Hay,* she needs Noah’s help to teach the kids the true joy of Hanukkah, and perhaps she’ll learn a thing or two about mishpacha while he’s at it.
“Killing Nana”
by Jan Greenfield
A wealthy family falls on hard times and decides that killing their 97-year-old grandmother is the solution to their financial woes. The siblings — V, Jenna and Owen — discover that each night of Hanukkah, their Nana, who is in declining health, is donating a significant portion of her fortune to charity. By the end of the holiday, if she survives all eight nights, her entire estate — and their entire inheritance — will be gone.
The siblings are uniquely ill-equipped for life without their grandmother’s wealth:
V runs a male modeling agency with models who rarely pay their bills and a habit of hiring them based on looks rather than competence.
Owen pretends to have a family using the photo inserts from picture frames, leveraging his “fake family” to scam Nana for funds.
Jenna is a “vacation artist,” someone who used to go on vacation and paint.
Having been stunted by their affluence and desperate to save themselves, the siblings make a pact to “off” Nana before Hanukkah ends.
Complicating their plans is Thursday, V’s adopted Chinese daughter, who is “more Wednesday than Wednesday” (hence the name). A brooding teenager with a sharp sense of justice, Thursday is fiercely loyal to her “GG” (Great-Grandmother) and idolizes her secretive past as a Partisan resistance fighter. Thursday suspects her family’s motives and becomes determined to protect Nana while pursuing her own mission: uncovering and exposing the last remnants of Nazi collaborators still in hiding…
This dark comedy, blending absurdity, dysfunction and redemption, is comparable to “Knives Out,” “Clue” and “The Royal Tenenbaums.”
“My Sister’s Golem”
by Zoe Nevins
It’s almost 8-year-old Anna’s favorite time of year: Hanukkah! She can’t wait for the glowing lights, playful presents and to sing and dance around her house with glee. Most importantly, she’s eager to share the holiday with her older sister, Maya.
Suddenly, Anna receives the worst news in the whole wide world: This winter, Maya will be transferring to a fancy-schmancy boarding school “for snot-nosed girls who don’t want to spend time with their adorable little sisters.”
Why does Maya want to leave? Will she be gone forever? What if she doesn’t come home for the holidays? Will Anna be spending Hanukkahs alone?
Spiraling and desperate for a Hanukkah miracle, Anna whips her leftover dreidel clay into a real-life golem (Josh Gad). She whispers one wish to the golem: “Give Maya a Hanukkah so special she won’t leave me.”
Unknown to Anna, however, golems are notoriously literal creatures.
The golem happily obliges — ripping up lampposts into massive bridge-blocking menorahs, barricading highways with giant latkes and sufganiyot and lining the streets with crowds of people dancing “The Dreidel Song” Pied-Piper-style.
With the golem wrecking festive havoc throughout the town, Anna and Maya team up to capture the creature and control the chaos.
Will the sisters be able to contain the golem and save the holiday — or will the town be forever trapped in a Festival of Light? Will Anna and Maya be able to salvage their sisterhood — or will Anna lose her sister forever?
“Old Flames”
by Noa Zulman
Suzanne Jones (Sue) is a 52-year-old Australian woman. A part-time yoga teacher and life coach, she recently divorced her husband of thirty years after falling in love with one of her students – 30-year-old Rebecca (Bec).
Bec is a highly-strung, corporate lawyer in Sydney who has recently taken up yoga in a bid to manage her stress levels. After accidentally falling for her non-Jewish yoga instructor, she is attempting to navigate a new relationship with a much older woman while batting off her parents’ expectations that she settles down with a Nice Jewish Boy.
Jessica Jones (Jess) is Sue’s 27-year-old, bisexual daughter. Tired of her parents’ acrimonious relationship and constant bickering, Jess fled to Los Angeles 18 months ago where she has been working as a model by day and auditioning for various indie film projects by night. Jess met her current male partner, 32-year-old Alex, at an audition for a low-budget production of “A Midsummer’s Night Dream.”
Alex is a software engineer at a start-up in LA and an aspiring stand-up comedian/actor. While identifying as culturally Jewish, he has spent the better part of a decade sleeping with — and subsequently discarding — a string of young, blonde non-Jewish women. He swears Jess is the real deal, though.
The two couples converge during a swelteringly hot summer break in Sydney, Australia. As Sue prepares to make amends with her estranged daughter and Jess braces herself for meeting her mother’s girlfriend for the first time, neither woman turns her mind to the drama that is about to unfold between their respective partners. As fate would have it, Bec and Alex are far from strangers: a brief romance during a study abroad program in London over a decade ago threatens to be rekindled as the pair bond over the awkwardness of being the lone Jews at a family Christmas. Meanwhile, Jess begins to nurse something of a crush on Bec. “Shiva Baby” meets Sally Rooney in a romantic comedy that is infected with Jewish humor and aching with queer desire. This holiday season, will old flames reignite? Or will it take a Hanukkah miracle to save the Jones’ relationships from combustion?
“Sherman Actually”
by Delia Koolick
After the big success of the Timothée Chalamet look-a-like contest, the world is ready for the newest contest to take over the streets of New York City. In this charming tale of love, adventure and latkes, all it took was a Sarah Sherman look-a-like contest to change two people’s worlds forever. Shoshana (played by Zoey Deutch) a NYC resident who has been told she resembles the SNL star, decides she will just go for fun. Rachel (played by none other than Sarah Sherman), a girl visiting from Minnesota, sees an Instagram post about it and decides she must go, confident she will win. On the fateful day in the park, Shoshana and Rachel bump into each other during the contest. They start talking and joking around and generally having a great time! Rachel shares with Shoshana that she’s just visiting for Hanukkah but is already in love with the city and the people in it. When it’s time to announce the winner, the girls have yet to exchange numbers but both have felt a positive vibe. When Rachel is crowned winner, she’s whisked away by the crowd in celebration, leaving Shoshana alone.
Desperate to find the Sherman to her Sarah, Shoshana embarks on an eight night adventure through New York City. Each night, she goes to different Hanukkah pop up bars to see if Rachel is at any of them. She meets a ton of cool Jewish people, including a gay professor from NYU (played by Billy Eichner), a TikTok influencer (played by Maude Apatow) and a Times Square Spider-Man (played by Andrew Garfield) and of course, the most epic game of Jewish geography ensues. However, the holiday passes by with no luck, and no sign of Rachel. On the eighth day, Shoshana’s friend David (played by Dan Levy) suggests she invite all the cool people she has met throughout the week to an end of Hanukkah celebration in the hopes that someone they met will know Rachel and invite her. Shoshana throws a big party and spends the night looking for her dream girl. When all hope seems lost, Rachel walks in! She says she’s been looking for Shoshana for the whole holiday! As it turns out, Rachel was in New York City to interview for a big corporate job and she just found out she got it and will be moving to NYC. It’s a Hanukkah Miracle!
The movie ends with a jump to the next year’s Hanukkah. Rachel and Shoshana, now living together in a 1-bedroom walk-up, light the menorah and share a beautiful kiss. They all lived happily ever after!
“Stuck in the Deli With You”
by Lily Solomon
In the days of global warming, no one listens to blizzard warnings anymore. That’s why it’s just past 7 p.m. on the seventh night of Hanukkah, and there are seven people snowed-in inside Bernstein’s deli. Nathan Bernstein (Mandy Patinkin) is trying to accept the fact that he’s stuck with six annoying customers when he gets a call from Larry David (Larry David) reminding him that Larry ordered 700 sufganiyot for his Hanukkah party and he will be there at 7 a.m. to pick them up, blizzard be damned.
With the subway shut down, Jerry’s baking staff can’t get to the deli, so he has no choice but to enlist the help of his eccentric customers, and tensions are thicker than overcooked kugel.
Esther and Ethel (Bette Midler and Barbara Streisand), 74-year-old twins, came to Bernstein’s to get the meat for their annual “friendly” brisket cook-off and now they’re stuck measuring yeast. Rachel (Maya Rudolph) came in to get some applesauce when she ran into her ex-situationship Mark (Paul Rudd) buying sour cream. Now the two of them have to knead the dough together while trying to avoid eye contact.
As if that weren’t enough, Katie (Beanie Feldstein) who just wanted a warm knish for her commute is fielding calls from her irate mother (Fran Drescher) while she makes jam, and Ken Smith (Ryan Gosling) just came into the deli to get out of the snow and is busy trying to figure out what the heck a Surf-gone-yo is — while also vying for Jessica’s attention (or maybe Mark’s… he’s undecided).
Can this ragtag group of Jews (and one token goyfriend) pull off a Maccabee-worthy miracle and get Larry his donuts? Or will they all kill each other before the oil even gets hot enough to fry?
“The Royal Mohel”
by Sarah Muszynski
In a small Eastern European country, a royal baby has been born to King Ansel and his beautiful wife, Queen Dina! Queen Dina is Jewish, though, and this small country does not have its own mohel… so Dina recruits her brother’s childhood friend Brandon from New York City to fly to Eastern Europe to perform the ceremony. Brandon soon arrives in Eastern Europe only to meet Princess Bea, King Ansel’s charming sister, who feels like there must be something better out there than the Christmas festivities in her small town.
Brandon embarks on a whirlwind educational tour over the next six days leading up to the bris — he teaches Bea about Hanukkah, and they create new Hanukkah festivities in the town, including a Hanukkah market, gelt-making, a progressive sufganiyot tour from house to house and a Hanukkah ball held two nights before the bris. At the ball, Brandon and Bea share a kiss under the sparkling latke disco ball, but then Brandon gets word from a huge congregation back in New York that their mohel is retiring and they would like him take over. It’s his dream job! With Brandon set to leave the day after the Bris, Bea scrambles to find her country’s small but thriving Jewish community and build connections with the Jewish communities in the 12 other small countries in close proximity. Together, they find a way to create a centralized mohel position for Brandon. Bea surprises him with the news and confesses her love, as well as that she is going to begin the conversion process and make the Hanukkah festivities an annual event. Brandon shares his feelings and how pleased he is with what Bea has done, telling her she has chutzpah.
The film ends with the community celebrating the bris, collectively shouting “Mazel tov!” first as Brandon completes the ceremony (in a Hallmark censored-for-TV version) and again when he walks over to Bea to kiss her in front of everyone. After a fade to black and “the end” appears on screen, two anthropomorphized cartoon sufganiyot strut to the center from either side, join together in a kiss, and pull the “the end” off screen together.
“Traumakah”
by Zane Hellmann
Sammy Spielman (David Corenswet) is a star hockey player for the Providence Bruins (minor league hockey team), who dreams of playing in the NHL. The day before Hanukkah, in his last game before being called up to play for the Boston Bruins, Sammy is injured by an opposing team’s player and rushed to the hospital, where they perform an emergency surgery to save his life. He wakes up that evening to find a surgical resident, Dr. Jessica Eisenberg (Marisa Abela) checking on him as she starts her first night of a two week stretch on call. They have a flirtatious conversation as she examines him, where they both lament they won’t be able to celebrate Hanukkah properly. Though he hasn’t celebrated Hanukkah in years, he asks if she can bring a menorah for them to light together that night and the nights he has remaining in the hospital.
They continue to do the same thing each night when Jessica arrives for her night shift, and soon find themselves having deep conversations late into the night. Sammy is told repeatedly by Jessica to not play hockey for at least six weeks following his injury. He tries to explain to her that this is his one chance at making the NHL, but Jessica says he could end up dying if he plays too soon. Sammy feels better and wants to sign-out against medical advice on the seventh night of Hanukkah so that he can play for the Bruins the next night. Jessica asks him to stay, but eventually Sammy leaves.
On the eighth night, Jessica arrives at the hospital. She goes through her regular rounds, and then returns to the resident lounge, where a co-resident is watching the game. Unable to watch, she leaves and goes down to the main lobby where the big menorah is being lit by the rabbi. The rabbi sees her and asks if she would like to help light. As she is holding the shamash, she feels a tap on the shoulder and turns to find Sammy there, where he explains why he loves her and couldn’t bear the thought of not being with her for the last night of Hanukkah. Together they light the menorah.
Vote for your favorite pitch by Wednesday, Dec. 18 at 5 p.m. ET!
