A Chicago theater canceled an advance screening of “Bring the Family Home,” a documentary about campus antisemitism, four hours before its showtime, citing “the safety and well-being of our community.”
Rami Even-Esh, an Israeli-American Jewish rapper who uses the stage name Kosha Dillz, created the still-unfinished documentary about his music and life on college campuses after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The screening was also to feature a panel discussion with Kosha Dillz and Michael Kaminsky, a Jewish student who was assaulted last November in an alleged hate crime at the nearby DePaul University.
But before Tuesday’s screening could take place, Facets, an independent cinema in Chicago, cancelled it. The theater announced the decision in a since-deleted post on Instagram that night that began with the sentence, “We are firmly not an antisemitic organization.”
It cited statements by the filmmaker, though it did not detail what they said.
“Based on the public posts made by Kosha Dillz and the overall tone surrounding the event, we determined that proceeding would not align with our values or our responsibility to protect the safety and well-being of our community,” the statement said. “We reject antisemitism in all forms — just as we reject Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism, and any form of hate or dehumanization.”
Security measures offered and declined
Kosha Dillz said that they had offered to provide security measures for the screening, but Facets declined.
“We are now hostages to a new form of bigotry that is called exclusion,” he said in a statement. “It will bar us from intellectual spaces that we would normally attend, such as facets.”
The Chicago Jewish Alliance, which helped organize the screening, lambasted the decision, writing in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Facets’ website says it “expands perspectives and affirms a shared humanity through inclusive engagement with film.”
“Cancelling a documentary film about the challenges with creating discourse about a difficult topic made by an Israeli filmmaker should have fit squarely within this mission,” the CJA statement said. “Instead, Facets shut down a perspective, denied shared humanity, and excluded Jews.”
CJA said that it had chosen Facets as the venue for the event because it had shown “No Other Land,” the Academy Award-winning documentary about Israeli demolition of a Palestinian West Bank village, and felt “Bring the Family Home” would “expand perspectives” at the theater.
The American Jewish Committee’s Chicago regional office also decried the cancellation, writing on Instagram that Jewish student voices “have a right to be heard.”
Following the cancellation, CJA rescheduled the screening at the Wilmette Theater in suburban Chicago.
