YANIV

With Benjamin Ducoff, Annabelle Steven

Consider a Bronx high school drama teacher getting around budget cuts by funding the school’s spring musical with illegal gambling loot.  That’s the wacky plot premise cooked up by writer/director Carmi and co-writer/actor Ducoff, partners in crime since the fourth grade.  Desperate for funding, teacher Bernstein (Ducoff, a real-life NYC high school teacher) gets tipped off to a high-stakes underground gambling ring where Yaniv, “the Blackjack of the Jewish people,” is the game of choice.  The catch?  The secret basement nightclub is run by and for a tight-knit group of Hasidic men, and Bernstein and his pal Jonah don’t have a ghost of a chance at passing, until…the pair don Orthodox disguises complete with fake beards, and it is game on.