It’s only natural that a movie about a bar mitzvah host filmed in Western Pennsylvania would make its local debut at a festival celebrating Jewish cinema.
“Cha Cha Real Smooth,” a movie from writer-director Cooper Raiff that filmed here last summer, will be making its Pittsburgh premiere in late April as the opening-night presentation of Film Pittsburgh’s 2022 JFilm Festival. That’s almost a full two months before the film officially premieres June 17 on Apple TV+.
The festival will host an in-person screening of “Cha Cha Real Smooth” at AMC Waterfront 22 on April 28 at 7 p.m. Tickets for that event will go on sale April 7 and can be purchased via filmpittsburgh.org.
“We’re incredibly excited to host the Pittsburgh premiere of this terrific film in a theater,” Kathryn Spitz Cohan, Film Pittsburgh’s executive director, said in a statement to the Post-Gazette. “So many talented Pittsburghers worked on it, and we can’t wait to showcase that talent on the big screen!”
In “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” Raiff plays the aforementioned bar mitzvah party host, who forms a strong bond with Domino (Dakota Johnson) and her autistic daughter, Lola (Vanessa Burghardt). The film’s cast also includes Brad Garrett, Leslie Mann, Evan Assante, Raúl Castillo and Odeya Rush. The film premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival and was quickly acquired for worldwide distribution by Apple for a price tag of about $15 million.
This year will mark the 29th iteration of Film Pittsburgh’s JFilm Festival and a return to in-person screenings after last year’s event was forced to go completely online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2022 version will run from April 28 through May 8 and, in addition to the in-person showings, will include 15 films screening virtually.
Film Pittsburgh will be showing two other JFilm Festival selections at AMC Waterfront in addition to “Cha Cha Real Smooth”: the world premiere of the documentary “Repairing the World: Stories from the Tree of Life” on May 5, and the French film “Rose,” during its closing night .
More information about the 2022 JFilm Festival’s lineup will be revealed in the near future on Film Pittsburgh’s website.
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh.
First Published: March 22, 2022, 6:43 p.m.
