Keep the Change

May 20, 2018 · Knoxville Museum of Art · 2:00 p.m.

2018 Independent Spirit Award-winning producer Summer Shelton will join us to discuss the film.

When aspiring filmmaker David (Brandon Polansky) is mandated by a judge to attend a social program at the Jewish Community Center, he is sure of one thing: he doesn’t belong there. But when he’s assigned to visit the Brooklyn Bridge with the vivacious Sarah (Samantha Elisofon), sparks fly and his convictions are tested. Their budding relationship must weather Sarah’s romantic past, David’s judgmental mother (Jessica Walter), and their own pre-conceptions of what love is supposed to look like.

Under the guise of an off-kilter New York romantic comedy, Keep the Change does something quite radical in offering a refreshingly honest portrait of a community seldom depicted on the big screen. Rarely has a romcom felt so deep and poignant. Thoroughly charming and quite funny, the film’s warmth and candor brings growth and transformation to the characters, and ultimately, to us.

“The narrative conventionality in Keep the Change is itself a subtle political statement about autism. Yet Israel’s crowd-pleaser is anything but a polemic; rather, like the bond shared by David and Sarah, it’s at once totally normal and perfectly weird.” — Variety

About the Filmmakers

Rachel Israel (writer/director) lives in NYC and is an adjunct professor of film at Rhode Island School of Design. She was an associate producer of Violet & Daisy (2011), starring James Gandolfini and Saoirse Ronan, and has directed numerous short films that have screened at festivals such as Slamdance and Rooftop. Keep the Change, her debut feature, premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the Jury Award for Best U.S. Narrative Feature and Israel won Best Director.

Summer Shelton (Producer) was Executive Producer of People Places Things, which premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, and produced Little Accidents, which premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. She has worked alongside critically-acclaimed director Ramin Bahrani, as Associate Producer of Goodbye Solo (2008), Co-Producer of Plastic Bag (2009), and Associate Producer of At Any Price (2013), all of which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. She was the recipient of the inaugural Bingham Ray Creative Producing Fellowship awarded by the Sundance Institute (2012), Rotterdam Producing Fellowship (2013), and Film Independent Sloan Producing Fellowship (2014).