JFI Completion Grant Recipients

Completion Grant Year

2020
2021
2022

Film Type

Animation
Documentary
Experimental
Narrative
Television Series

Country

Category

Feature
Short
Television
Web Series

1341 Frames of Love and War

1341 Frames of Love and War

With unique access to an extraordinary archive of over half a million negatives and documents spanning from 1930’s Germany to today, 1341 Frames of Love and War tells the story of Israel’s most celebrated war photographer, Micha Bar-Am.

Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round

Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round

"Ain't No Back to a Merry-Go-Round" is a feature-length documentary film about a virtually unknown story from the early days of the civil rights movement.

The Binding of Itzik

The Binding of Itzik

A middle aged Hasidic bookbinder searching for binding materials stumbles across an ad offering 'binding lessons for submissive women,' which he answers, becoming entangled in an online BDSM relationship that threatens to unravel his quiet life.

A Crime on the Bayou

A Crime on the Bayou

Filmmaker Nancy Buirski (The Loving Story) tells the story of a lasting bond formed between an unjustly arrested Black man, Gary Duncan, and Richard Sobol, his young Jewish attorney.

A figurehead of American independent documentary film, Ralph Arlyck conveys how it feels to see the winding down of your life, as he spends time with older friends from his past and present, and his children and grandchildren.

I will take your shadow

I will take your shadow

Two brothers flee home during the Nazi regime. Generations later, their granddaughter weaves a dreamlike story of the untold past crossing into the present.

Irmi Selver was born into a comfortable Jewish family in Germany, in 1906, and passed in 2004, in New York City, at the age of 97. Susan Fanshel and Veronica Selver tell Irmi’s story in their sweet, engaging, and fascinating documentary, "Irmi."

The Liegnitz Plot

The Liegnitz Plot

Part mystery story and part comedic heist, “The Liegnitz Plot” is the surprising tale of how Gary, a risk-averse father of four and an original “Seinfeld” writer/producer, drops everything, enlists the help of a team of adventurous friends and filmmakers, and flies halfway around the world to attempt to find and rescue a priceless stamp collections collection the Nazi stole from concentration camp victims, buried somewhere in Poland.

My Name is Andrea

My Name is Andrea

Decades before #MeToo, the controversial Jewish feminist writer and public intellectual, Andrea Dworkin called out the pervasiveness of sexism and rape culture with revolutionary and iconoclastic flair.

A Photographic Memory

A Photographic Memory

A daughter attempts to piece together a portrait of her mother, an avant-garde journalist and a woman she never knew. Uncovering the vast archive Sheila Turner-Seed produced, including lost interviews with iconic photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gordon Parks, and Lisette Model, the film explores memory, legacy and stories left untold.

In the midst of shocking family revelations, a young filmmaker is diagnosed with terminal cancer. What follows is an intimate and darkly humorous journey of a family’s attempt to make sense of their upended past and disrupted future.

A Reel War: Shalal

A Reel War: Shalal

While digging in an Israeli archive, a film researcher stumbles across never-before-seen footage from a long-lost Palestinian Liberation Organization archive seized by Israel in the 1982 Lebanon war.

The brilliant David Strathairn gives a mesmerizing one-man performance as Jan Karski, a WWII Polish resistance fighter, whose testimony was emotionally given in Claude Lanzmann’s "Shoah."

The Return from the Other Planet

The Return from the Other Planet

Ka-Tsetnik established Israel’s perception of the Holocaust, coining the term “The Other Planet”. Following LSD treatment, during which he imagined himself as an SS officer, he abandoned the Other Planet.

Sons of Detroit

Sons of Detroit

The story of a family forged in 1970s Detroit. Two boys — one white, one black — raised as cousins. As the city teeters on the edge of economic collapse, the boys’ lives take radically different turns, each shaped by violence, opportunity, and race. Now, more than 20 years later, they each return to the city to reckon with the loss of home and family — and their roles in the destruction.

Those Who Heard and Those Who Saw

Those Who Heard and Those Who Saw

In 1940, Jewish refugees who had fled to the United Kingdom were sent to work in prison camps in Canada. Through a large archive of never-released audio interviews, "Those Who Heard and Those Who Saw" considers how their experiences connect to those of contemporary Syrian refugees in Canada.

'Til Kingdom Come

'Til Kingdom Come

Pastors encourage an impoverished Kentucky community, “The forgotten people of America,” to donate to Israel in anticipation of Jesus’s impending return. The film exposes the controversial bond between Evangelicals and Jews in a story of faith, power, and money, revealing how Trump’s America is led by an End-Times apocalyptic countdown.

With extraordinary access, What We Carry follows Magdiel, Mirna, and their son Josh, as the young family flees Honduras on foot, rides in cargo trains across Mexico, claims asylum at the U.S. border, and endures detention.

A middle aged Hasidic bookbinder searching for binding materials stumbles across an ad offering 'binding lessons for submissive women,' which he answers, becoming entangled in an online BDSM relationship that threatens to unravel his quiet life.

Click here for information about applying for a JFI Completion Grant