2021 JFI Completion Grant Recipients

The Jewish Film Institute awarded $100,000 to six projects in 2021, ranging from $5,000 to $30,000 per project. The announcement was made at the awards ceremony at the conclusion of the 41st San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

Jannat Gargi is an award-winning creative producer and film executive. Prior to joining Westbrook Inc., as Senior Vice President of Documentaries, she was Vice President of Documentaries for VICE Studios overseeing development for a slate of premium documentaries and series including ESPN's 30 For 30 series about the American Gladiators and Executive Producer of three time Academy Award nominated documentary FLEE (2022).

Rick Goldsmith is a two-time Academy Award nominee. He co-produced and co-directed (with Judith Ehrlich) The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (2009), an Academy-Award nominee for Best Feature Documentary, an Emmy nominee, and winner of a George Foster Peabody award (for its POV nationwide broadcast on PBS). He is the Producer/Director/Editor/Co-writer of Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press (1996), which was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. This acclaimed film on the pioneering muckraking journalist was broadcast nationwide on public television and has become a staple in college and high school journalism programs across the country. Born and raised in the suburbs of New York City, Goldsmith came west in 1975 and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area ever since. Trained in architecture, music and community activism, he started working in films in 1979 and made his living for years as an editor. Goldsmith is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS); and Writers Guild of America, West.

Lisa Leeman is an award-winning filmmaker best known for her social-issue documentaries that are driven by powerful character-driven narratives. Her directorial debut, METAMORPHOSIS: MAN INTO WOMAN, follows a transgender animation artist’s transition. The film is thought to be the first American film to chronicle a gender transition and was awarded Sundance’s Filmmakers Trophy (1990). Leeman’s work has been seen on PBS, HBO, Discovery, ARTE, and in theaters and festivals worldwide. She is a frequent juror, moderator, and panelist at documentary and independent filmmaking events. In addition, she is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), and has served as a judge at the Sundance Film Festival, president of the International Documentary Association, and on the boards of the IDA and the National Coalition of Independent Public Broadcasting Producers.

Micha Peled is a San Francisco-based documentary filmmaker. He was born in Israel and is one of the few who ever emigrated to the U.S. by hitchhiking. After making his first film “Will My Mother Go Back to Berlin?” he quit his day job and never looked back. Micha’s “Globalization Trilogy,” filmed in the U.S., China (clandestinely) and India, comprised of “STORE WARS”: “When Wal-Mart Comes to Town,” “China Blue” and “Bitter Seeds.” Micha’s films premiered at the Toronto and San Francisco International Film Festivals, Telluride, SXSW and IDFA. They aired on 33 television channels, had theatrical releases in Europe, Japan and the U.S. and were pirated countless times. He is the recipient of 20 international awards, including Amnesty International Human Rights Award, the Oxfam Global Justice Award, the PBS/Independent Lens Audience Award and the Golden Gate Award.

Veronica Selver has been an award-winning documentary editor for over 20 years, with credits on such highly regarded films as On Company Business, the Academy Award-nominated Berkeley in the Sixties (POV 1991), Harry Bridges: A Man and His Union, Absolutely Positive, Coming Out Under Fire and, most recently, Blacks and Jews, which premiered at Sundance and aired on POV. in 1997. She also produced and directed an episode of the 1996 ITVS series, Positive. Her co-directing credits include You Got to Move, First Look, and the duPont-Columbia awardwinning Word Is Out, the first feature documentary on growing up gay in America.