As summer heats up, Jewish adults looking for an escape from the fraught state of world Jewry may find themselves reflecting on a seemingly simpler time — ​​getting competitive over color war or gaga ball and singing Debbie Friedman songs around a campfire at Jewish sleepaway camp.

That sense of nostalgia for one’s Jewish summer camp years is doled out liberally in “The Floaters,” a new film that centers on the fictional Camp Daveed and a group of outsider teens called the floaters. 

“The Floaters” tells the story of Nomi (Jackie Tohn), who is freshly ousted from her rock band and reluctantly takes a job from her best friend Mara (Sarah Podemski), who is now camp director at their childhood Jewish summer camp. Nomi is charged with producing the camp play with the group of “Breakfast Club”-inspired campers. 

The comedy was filmed at Camp Tel Yehudah in Barryville, N.Y. — where the film’s three sibling producers grew up, and where their parents met. “You should write about what you know, and if there’s anything we know, it’s Jewish summer camp,” Shai Korman, who produced the film alongside his sisters, Lily and Becky, told Jewish Insider. The movie was directed by Rachel Israel and written by Brent Hoff, Andra Gordon and Amelia Brain. 

Korman told JI that “The Floaters” — which began production about a month before the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel — was not created to counter rising antisemitism. Rather, Korman said, “our goal was expanding and deepening the definition of how Jews are represented on screen.”

“We try to push the movie beyond lox and bagels,” he said, noting that the sibling trio specifically aimed to “put on screen Jewish women that exemplified the Jewish women that raised us, that were leaders and mentors.” Camp Daveed is run by women, from camp director Mara to the camp’s rabbi, Rabbi Rachel. 

Several iconic films, such as “Wet Hot American Summer” and “Meatballs,” were also inspired by Jewish camps. But in “The Floaters,” “we talk about the rules of kashrut,” Korman said. “You see Orthodox and secular kids all together, reflecting the world we grew up in.”  

Korman said an important aspect of that representation was casting all of the Jewish roles with Jewish actors — which includes Persian, Latino and Asian Jews. 

“Making these kind of stories does help combat negative stereotypes about Jews,” Korman told JI. “But we came from it more from the joyful affirmative we want to expand.” 

Like most summer camps itself, the movie is apolitical. Still, it doesn’t shy away from briefly talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other debates within the Jewish community. In one scene, campers make maps of Israel out of ice cream. “That’s the kind of thing that used to happen at camp when we were there,” Korman reflected.  A counselor responds that one of the maps holds the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

In another scene, Rabbi Rachel pushes for discussions about “the hard stuff,” including Israel and “all the ways the Torah has excluded or offended you.” The idea is rejected by the camp director, who says she would get angry calls from parents if those seminars took place. 

“If people go away from this movie thinking it’s some kind of political statement, they might want to take a moment of reflection, because what we’re doing is showing an authentic experience,” Korman said. “The movie is not about Israel, but Israel is part of the fabric of the story and the environment because that’s what Jewish summer camp is like.” 

“The Floaters” premiered in June for a mostly non-Jewish audience at the Bentonville Film Festival in Arkansas. While the film has specific details that “only camp kids would know,” Korman said — for example, the chaos that ensues after dairy spoons are switched with meat ones in the camp’s kosher kitchen — “for people who aren’t Jewish,” he continued, “it will make them excited to either learn more or feel like they’re in on it. We believe the more specific you get, the more universal you can be.”

Currently only available for private screenings, the film’s West Coast premiere is slated for Aug. 3 at the closing night of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.