After ten years in the making, a new Chanukah movie, Avremi and the Maccabees, has made its debut on Toveedo, garnering acclaim and adoration from Jewish children everywhere.
Video producer, Chaim Hershkowitz always wanted to create a fun Chanukah movie, having been inspired by a play he took part in as a young bochur. “I was so enamored with the story, specifically the time travelling component, that years later I built on that original script to create a travelling play in Toronto but I always felt that it could be done in real life and professionally, as a full movie,” he said.
“Over the last ten years I kept talking about it with friends and family and last year I finally started working on the script in an effort to get it out. This year the timing was right. At Toveedo we have so many productions being created simultaneously, that we recently started collaborating with other video creators.”
Over Sukkos, Toveedo did a video with Menachem Silverstein and he did a fantastic job, enough that Hershkowitz felt that he could trust him with this passion project.
Menachem combined the original scripts that had gone through various iterations by Chaim Hershkowitz as well as Tzvi Hershcovich and Malky Gaerman. Each one added a little more flavor and Menachem took all of them together and wrote a beautiful screenplay. Menachem directed the project from beginning to end and put together a wonderful collection of cast and crew that brought the story to life.
“The only thing I insisted on, was Mendy Pellin as the lead,” Chaim says. “Mendy Pellin is such a versatile comedian that I just felt he embodied everything that the lead character needed for this film. The feedback has been amazing. Most of the time I am inspired to create videos for our audience, but occasionally I will do a video that I wish were created when I was a kid and even if it’s more expensive, I enjoy seeing it done (such as the Rebbe’s Niggunim). The fact that people are loving it and watching it on repeat is why we do this. For Jewish children and the inner child in all of us.”
Avremi and the Maccabees is now streaming on Toveedo.com
VIDEO – Trailer
