The Anne Frank Gift Shop was shortlisted for the 2024 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short. The film, written and directed by Mickey Rapkin, premiered at L.A. Shorts in 2023 and won the Film Movement Award at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and a completion grant from JFI. Of the film, GQ magazine's Sarah Seltzer wrote: "Featuring darkly funny and ultimately moving turns by a strong cast including Ari Graynor and Chris Perfetti and comedian Mary Beth Barone as a stone-faced Gen Z influencer, The Anne Frank Gift Shop provides a poignant meta-commentary on our continually robust Anne Frank discourse. It’s a film that, per Sarah Paulson on Instagram, 'makes you laugh your face off AND FEEL things'." The film won the Audience Award in Philadelphia and has screened around the world at festivals including SCAD, the Cleveland International Film Festival, and the Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival.

A panel discussion and Q&A featuring writer/director Mickey Rapkin, Ari Graynor, and Avinoam Patt,moderated by the bestselling author of Grief Is for People, Sloane Crosley will follow the screening.

Part of the Center’s film series Holocaust History on Film: Anne Frank and Beyond in connection with Anne Frank The Exhibition. Purchase your tickets to the exhibition here.

Thank you to Ancestry, the Center for Jewish History’s Family History sponsor

About the Speakers
Sloane Crosley is the author of The New York Times bestselling books Grief Is for People, How Did You Get This Number, and I Was Told There’d Be Cake (a 2009 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor). She is also the author of Look Alive Out There (a 2019 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor) and the novels, Cult Classic and The Clasp, both of which she has adapted for film. Her work has been translated into ten languages. She has been a columnist for The Village Voice, Vanity Fair, Esquire, The Independent, Black Book, Departures and The New York Observer. A contributing editor at Vanity Fair, her work has appeared in various publications including The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue and The Guardian.

Ari Graynor most recently starred in the Ryan Murphy Netflix limited series Monsters: The Erik and Lyle Menendez Story as defense attorney Leslie Abramson. Her other television credits include Winning Time, Mrs. America and Showtime’s I’m Dying Up Here. Her many film credits include The Disaster Artist, The Front Runner, For a Good Time Call, and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Graynor has performed on and off-Broadway including in Anna Jordan’s Yen (Lucille Lortel nominee), The Performers, Relatively Speaking, The Little Dog Laughed, Brooklyn Boy, and Dog Sees God.

Avinoam Patt is Rennert Director of the Center for the Study of Antisemitism at NYU. He previously held the Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies at the University of Connecticut, where he served as Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life. He is the author of multiple books on Jewish responses to the Holocaust, including Finding Home and Homeland: Jewish Youth and Zionism in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (2009). He recently completed a book on the early postwar memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (The Jewish Heroes of Warsaw: The Afterlife of the Revolt, 2021). His newest book, Israel and the Holocaust, was published by Bloomsbury Press as part of its Perspectives on the Holocaust series in 2024.

Mickey Rapkin made his directorial debut with The Anne Frank Gift Shop which was shortlisted for the 2024 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short. He also wrote the film, a dark comedy about antisemitism starring Ari Graynor and Chris Perfetti. Rapkin is a screenwriter and journalist whose first book, Pitch Perfect—about the world of competitive a cappella singing groups—inspired the film franchise of the same name. Previously a senior editor at GQ, he has written for the New York Times, WSJ, Town & Country, and Esquire.