George Feldenkreis's ever-present smile keeps viewers glued to the screen in the documentary From Cuba to America, which will have its world premiere at the Miami Jewish Film Festival on January 24, with two additional screenings on Monday the 26th and Wednesday the 28th.

Feldenkreis (Havana, 1935–Miami, 2025) speaks with a smile in his voice and eyes. And for those who think they know the story of the Cuban Jewish immigrant, the businessman and philanthropist who arrived in Miami in 1961 with $70 and built a multimillion-dollar textile empire—today the Perry Ellis International group—the curiosity of discovering so many lives within one, lived with such optimism, is what captivates the viewer.

“His sense of humor was unmistakably Jewish,” says Jerry Levine, director of From Cuba to America. “The funniest things he said were often sprinkled with Yiddish: that cadence, that irony, that warmth… it’s a very old and beautiful tradition.”

Many Lives in One: From Guayabera Vendor to Textile Magnate

Feldenkreis was many things in his 89 years: a guayabera vendor, an architect of modern Miami, one of the lucky few to ring the opening bell at the Stock Exchange on Wall Street; a tireless worker who one day found himself with a $12 million check in his hand, earned when his company went public, which he kept so he would never forget how hard it had been to get there.

He was also the businessman who rescued his company and took it private again when he saw his legacy threatened.

But above all, he was a Cuban boy, the son of Ukrainian Jews, who grew up in a small Havana apartment, where he shared a room with his grandfather and sister.

“We lived in poverty all the time; I wouldn’t say it was a happy childhood, but a mediocre one,” Feldenkreis acknowledges in the documentary.

He also witnessed the suffering of the Jewish people from an early age, reflected in the tears of his mother, who had lost family members in extermination camps in Europe.

“I saw my mother cry, and it was the first time I understood the evil against the Jews,” Feldenkreis recounts.

The trade learned at home: fabrics, commerce, and the beginning in Miami.

His father sold fabrics, and from him he learned to be a merchant, an experience that gave him the confidence to become a door-to-door salesman in Hialeah, as he also recalls in the documentary.

He developed his leadership qualities from a young age as a member of the Jewish Youth in Cuba, a time when he traveled the city visiting Jewish homes, to the point of knowing almost every member of the community.

“What surprised me most about Cuba, in the context of this film, was the depth of Havana’s Jewish community,” says Levine. “That religious and cultural foundation profoundly influenced George. As a teenager, he met Menachem Begin in Havana and spent an entire day with him, an unforgettable experience that helped shape his path as a world leader.”

The documentary also presents Feldenkreis as a law student at the University of Havana, a degree he paid for himself. Then, it shows the lawyer who, after the revolution in 1959, had an early encounter with Fidel Castro, who assigned him a mission—which I won't reveal so you can see it in the film—related to a building on the Malecón that had served as a student residence.

The return to Cuba in 2011, the closing of a circle

One of the most moving aspects of the documentary for Cuban exiles, especially those who have never returned to Cuba, is Feldenkreis's return trip to the island in 2011. Now a successful man and accompanied by some of his family, the businessman humbly knocks on the door of the Havana apartment where he grew up.

They let him in, and suddenly, two worlds collide, with that nostalgia that comes from the overlapping of different eras in the same space. What follows is joyful: Feldenkreis reunites with some of his law school classmates, and there is dancing and camaraderie.

"George handed me a DVD and said, 'Jerry, you have to see this unedited footage,'" Levine recalls. “As soon as I saw them, I knew they had to be at the end of the film. It was epic: George returning to Havana and to his childhood home at the end of his life. A truly poignant moment that represents the cycle of life.”

Voices and Testimonies: Who Appears in the Documentary

The documentary features interviews with Feldenkreis's children, Fanny Hanono and Oscar Feldenkreiss, who currently directs Perry Ellis; Jacob Solomon, former president of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation; designer Tommy Hilfiger; and musician and producer Emilio Estefan, who composed part of the documentary's soundtrack.

The Miami Jewish Film Festival runs until January 29, with a program that is a true celebration for film lovers in the community, said film critic Alejandro Ríos.

Festival director Igor Shteyrenberg emphasized that the event has “a responsibility to support filmmakers and artists, especially when Jewish and Israeli stories are marginalized elsewhere.”

“A great film has the power to open hearts and minds like nothing else: it can deeply move you, make you believe in the goodness and kindness of people, and offer hope where there seems to be none,” Shteyrenberg concluded. From Cuba to America, world premiere January 24, 7:30 p.m., Miami Theater Center, 9806 NE 2nd Ave., Miami Shores; January 26, 7:30 p.m., Temple Menorah, 620 75th St., Miami Beach; and January 28, 7:30 p.m., Michael-Ann Russell JCC, 18900 NE 25th Ave. For the full festival program, visit https://miamijewishfilmfestival.org/ Tickets: 305-503-5182.

This story was originally published on January 24, 2026, at 7:30 a.m.