“My Tale of Two Cities” is a funny and heartfelt tale of coming home again, and of people and cities being challenged to reinvent themselves for a new age. The film has resonated with Jewish audiences as it has played around the country, for it is very much a story of Exodus.

The film’s director, “St. Elmo’s Fire” screenwriter and “Saved By the Bell” writer/producer Carl Kurlander, will attend screenings in Boston on July 29 and July 30. After the July 30th 7:45 p.m. screening, beloved icon “Mr. McFeely” (David Newell) from “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” will lead the Boston audience in a “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” sing-along, as is done in the film with groups in Times Square, Beverly Hills and Pittsburgh.

The film features one of Fred Rogers’ real life neighbors, Teresa Heinz Kerry, who also has Boston roots. After a funny sequence of Ms. Kerry cheese shopping, she engages in a thoughtful conversation about how communities can transcend their challenges, reminding us that “what we need is an infusion of dreamers… because dreaming is contagious.”

About the film
With both himself and his hometown in a mid-life crisis, Kurlander set out on a Don Quixote quest to make a film to help the city he grew up in. Armed with a cranky cameraman, funded by his dermatologist, (a scene actually captured in the film) and often battling his wife who longed to return to the sunny West Coast, Carl goes off on an adventure.

He plays catch with Steelers great Franco Harris, endures the wrath of comic Louie Anderson, chats with “Mr. McFeely” of “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood,” which was produced in Pittsburgh for 40 years, visits with Andy Warhol’s nephew who owns a local junkyard, goes fishing with the mayor, and asks how this once great industrial giant, which built America with its steel, conquered polio, and invented everything from aluminum to the Big Mac, can reinvent itself for a new age.

In so doing, with this funny, quirky, personal approach, Kurlander and his crew manage to document one of the new millennium’s most remarkable urban comebacks (not unlike that which Boston underwent in the 60’s and 70’s.) Having faced bankruptcy in 2003, by 2009, Pittsburgh hosted the world’s G-20 Economic Summit where it was called “a model for the future” and in 2010 was named by Forbes Magazine “America’s Most Livable City.” This timely, feel-good movie is inspiring at a time when both people and cities around this country are being challenged to coming to terms with their pasts in order to redefine who they are.

“My Tale of Two Cities” has received national attention in USA Today, The Washington Post, and on the PBS News Hour. On March 23, 2010, it was the first film ever to screen at the new Capitol Hill Visitor’s Center in Washington, D.C., where Congressman Mike Doyle called it “a comeback story which can inspire cities around the country.”

Howard Fineman of Newsweek wrote, “Carl Kurlander’s movie is the wry, funny tale of the fulfillment he found moving back home. A cross between Woody Allen and Fred Rogers, he reminds us that our cities are the real “Real America” in which we can best renew ourselves, our country, and our hope for all humanity.”

Mitch Teich of Milwaukee Public Radio said, “A movie that is timely, moving, and — above all — entertaining. You can’t get an entire city into therapy — but this film is the next best thing.”

Show times are July 29 at 5:30 p.m., July 30 at 7:45 p.m., July 31 at 5 p.m., August 1 at 11 a.m. and August 5 at 5 p.m. Advanced tickets can be purchased at http://www.mfa.org/ Seating is limited. For further information, visit http://www.mytaleoftwocities.com.