San Francisco Jewish Film Festival

Praying With Lior

Director, editor and members of the Liebling family in person: San Francisco

Watching Praying with Lior is a very rare experience: it breaks your heart while it warms it. Ilana Trachtman's coming-of-age documentary is an engaging and deeply human portrait of young Lior Liebling, a child with Down syndrome who is as loving and joyful and playful as any boy you are likely to meet. He's a kidder, fond of fidgeting out of uncomfortable situations with a disarming smile or a whimsical joke. But more than anything Lior is filled with an unquenchable spirit of davening (prayer) and singing. His devotion saturates his world with a love that is his manna--it multiplies and nourishes everyone. With his earnest presence he has created an integral place for himself in his extraordinary family, and the fact of that relationship touches and inspires others. One of four children of Rabbi Mordechai Liebling and the late Rabbi Devora Bartnoff, Lior cajoles his way into the hearts of his siblings and his loving stepmother, Lynne Iser. We, too, are drawn closer and closer to him as he navigates his daily life towards the bar mitzvah he has long anticipated--and we get to witness firsthand how the family and spiritual community he loves so much affirms the essence of the man Lior is becoming.

Praying with Lior is an answer to his late mother Devora's prayer: Lior creates a space for himself in this community, and that is a shining example for all.

The director Ilana Trachtman, subects Lynne Iser and the Liebling family will be present at the San Francisco screening.

Watch the Praying with Lior clip

Presented with I'm Charlie Chaplin

Sponsored by Jane Gottesman & Geoffrey Biddle

Co-presented by Parents Place Center for Special Needs at Jewish Family and Children's Services of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties; Jewish Milestones; Jewish Family & Children's Service of the East Bay; and Bay Area Women in Film and Television