Livingston Is The Setting For Texas Filmmaker's Bar Mitzvah Romance Movie: Find Out Why

LIVINGSTON, NJ — Young indie film writer/director Cooper Raiff is getting noticed for his new film about a single mom who ends up in an unlikely romance with a bar mitzvah entertainer. While Raiff is from Texas, he set the film in Livingston, according to NJArts.net.

"No one would accept a movie about bar mitzvahs in Dallas," he tells veteran film reviewer Stephen Witty, an Essex County native, in the piece. "So I felt I had to set it somewhere else. And my manager is from Livingston, so I knew about it that way. But, it’s very similar to where I grew up ... you’re close to New York, but not in New York."

The new film, "Cha Cha Real Smooth," became a "sensation" when it was screened at the Sundance Film Festival last month, according to Entertainment Weekly.

Vanessa Burghardt, the actress who plays the single mother's child — and who is on the autism spectrum in the film and in real life — is from New Jersey.

The film is now playing at the Tribeca Film Festival this Monday and Tuesday and will stream on AppleTV+ starting Friday, according to Whitty, who called the romance in the film "unlikely, sweet, and very touching."

The AppleTV+ trailer for the offbeat film is here.

Read more of the interview with Raiff in NJArts here.