diane estelle Vicari, filmmaker, Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness

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Appearing: Tuesday, February 24, during the St. Louis Jewish Film Festival Special Preview Event and screening of the documentary Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness.

Sponsored by: Nancy and Ken Kranzberg and Shelly and Rick Mayhew

diane estelle Vicari is an award‑winning documentary filmmaker and the producer of Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness, the 2026 St. Louis Jewish Film Festival selection. Her acclaimed film received the International Documentary Association’s prestigious Pare Lorentz Award and was honored as Best Documentary at the Hollywood Film Festival. A graduate of UCLA’s Program in Film and Television, diane estelle Vicari has built a distinguished career creating films that illuminate humanitarian stories and global interconnectedness.

Vicari is a tremendous addition to the St. Louis Jewish Film Festival because her work embodies the Festival’s mission: elevating stories of moral courage, Jewish history, and the universal human capacity for compassion. Her documentary on Chiune Sugihara—whose life‑saving actions during the Holocaust exemplify bravery and conscience—brings historical resonance and cinematic depth to this year’s Festival.

Special Partner Event: Japanese-American Exhibit at the St. Louis Holocaust Museum

This special event coincides with the Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum’s new exhibition, RESILIENCE: A Sansei Sense of Legacy, on view January 17 – April 4, 2026. In 1942, Executive Order 9066 forced the incarceration of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. Told from the perspective of Sansei – third-generation Japanese Americans – Resilience features the work of eight artists whose families experienced this injustice and whose art reflects on its impact across generations. That impact was also felt here in St. Louis, where many Japanese American families settled post incarceration.

This free exhibition is made possible through the Museum’s Partnership with the Japanese American Citizen’s League.

Lisa Effress, Producer, Tim Roper, Co-Director/Writer

Join us afterward for a Q&A discussion featuring For The Living film producer Lisa Effress and Co Director/Writer Tim Roper. Reception to follow.

Dr. Erin McGlothlin, Washington University Professor of German and Jewish Studies

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Appearing: Tuesday, March 17, following the 3pm showing of the documentary Elie Wiesel: Soul On Fire 

Dr. Erin McGlothlin is the Gloria M. Goldstein Professor of Holocaust Studies and Professor of German and Jewish Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where she also serves as Vice Dean of Undergraduate Affairs. Her scholarship focuses on Holocaust literature and film, German‑Jewish literature, and the ethics and narrative structures of Holocaust representation. She is the author of Second‑Generation Holocaust Literature and The Mind of the Holocaust Perpetrator in Fiction and Nonfiction, which received the 2023 Sybil Halpern Milton Book Prize.

Her expertise enriches conversations about how the Holocaust is portrayed on screen, making her an invaluable contributor to the St. Louis Jewish Film Festival.