Two Arlington siblings helped produce a feature film at their childhood summer camp and knew they wanted to screen it in the area they’ve called home for 23 years.

Shai and Becky Korman’s wish came true. Directed by Rachel Israel, “The Floaters” screened in Silver Spring and Alexandria in late July, following a November premiere at the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center’s JxJ – Washington Jewish Film and Music Festivals.

The feature film also took home eight awards at the Northern Virginia International Film and Music Festival.

“We’re really proud of that and we really try to be part of the film community here and the Jewish film community as much as we can,” said Shai Korman, one of the film’s four producers.

He lives in Arlington, right around the corner from his sister and co-producer, Becky Korman. (Their sister, Lily Korman, was also a producer of the film.) The location matters.

“So many people knew we were working on this movie,” Shai Korman said. “There’s so many people from the community who were helpful to us in one way or another, whether it was advice or … people who read the script and gave us feedback, and friends and family who were on the journey with us, and we felt it was really important that Washington, D.C., get to see it.”

Set at a Jewish summer camp, “The Floaters” is a comedy that follows a struggling musician tasked with supervising a group of misfit campers, the “floaters” of the title. The film stars Jackie Tohn, best known for her role on the Jewish Netflix hit “Nobody Wants This.”

Aside from evoking summer camp memories, the producers included nods to both the Kormans’ upbringing and the D.C. area two of them now call home.

“The Floaters” was filmed at Camp Tel Yehudah in Barryville, New York, in the Catskills, the camp where the producers’ parents met. Korman, his two siblings and their cousins also spent summers there as campers, and Korman hopes to send his kids there.

“We’re still very connected to that camp, and it was very cool to be back there,” Korman said, adding that he and other members of the cast and crew lived at the camp while filming. “We built a whole camp environment behind the scenes, which was really fun.”

The idea for the film came about from the producers wanting to tell a story where Jewish women were leaders.

“We were really inspired by the Jewish women in our lives to help create the characters of Nomi and Mara,” Korman said.

In “The Floaters,” both Nomi — the would-be rock star who is ousted from her band — and Mara, the camp director who enlists her to join her at camp, embody leadership roles at the fictitious Camp Daveed. The two women have polar opposite personalities, which results in a clashing of heads, but they both lead in their own ways.

The camp’s spiritual leader is a female rabbi played by Aya Cash.

“We did a really cool exploration of Jewish women leaders in our lives, and that was every[one] from our mother, but also women in our community in D.C.,” he added. “It’s an amazing community.”

One such leader who stands out to Korman is Miriam Szubin, who directs the EDCJCC’s children and family programming. Korman and his team reached out to Szubin, among other leaders, in 2023 in an effort to better grasp Jewish female leadership.

“The heart of it was trying to understand the values and the way she approached being a leader in her community and what that means to her,” Korman said of Szubin. “We collected that from many people in our lives, and it helped us make sure we had a 3D understanding of the type of people we want to represent.”

A memorable part of “The Floaters” comes around the film’s midpoint, where an instructor leads dozens of campers in a choreographed dance after dark. Maud Arnold, the co-founder of the DC Tap Festival, the world’s largest tap festival, not only choreographed that scene, but also plays the camp’s dance instructor.

“I had to pinch myself when we got a message from an agent saying, ‘Maud Arnold would be willing to meet with you.’ I couldn’t believe it,” Korman recalled. “I remember meeting with her and she was just so excited to be a part of it.”

Arnold and her sister, Chloé, are granddaughters of a Holocaust survivor. “So I know there was a personal connection to the material in that sense,” Korman said. “And then for me to work with a world-class choreographer also from my hometown was such an incredible treat.”

“The Floaters” opened in theaters July 10, with a video-on-demand release expected later this year.

zbell@midatlanticmedia.com