JFI Filmmakers in Residence

Filmmaker Residency Year

2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2020
2021
2022
2024
2025

Film Type

Animation
Documentary
Experimental
Narrative
Television Series

Country

Category

Feature
Short
Television
Web Series

Amanda Rubin: The Third Reich of Dreams: Dreaming Under Dictatorship

From Weimar Activist to dream collector to New York celebrity stylist, the untold story of one woman’s undercover mission to collect evidence against the Nazis. A uniquely prophetic and penetrating insight into the psychological effects of totalitarianism.

Andrew Garbus: Everything I Own

Andrew Garbus: Everything I Own

Andrew Garbus’ parents are preparing to divorce and sell his childhood home. As rooms are packed and memories unearthed, the family is forced to confront a traumatic past, an uncertain future and, most of all, themselves.

Annie Berman: In Berlin

Annie Berman: In Berlin

IN BERLIN, a VR essay film, tells the story of a NYC-artist on her first and last trip to Berlin. Told she resembles Anne Frank, she floats through the city feeling like her doppelganger’s aged-ghost.

Brian Becker: Malls of America

"Malls of America" traces the rise, fall, and potential reinvention of the most quintessentially American habitat: the enclosed shopping mall.

Charene Zalis: Repairing the World: Stories From the Tree of Life

Charene Zalis: Repairing the World: Stories From the Tree of Life

For three years REPAIRING THE WORLD: STORIES FROM THE TREE OF LIFE follows survivors, families of the victims, diverse community members, students and civic leaders as they examine their vulnerabilities and the impact of rising antisemitism, racism, hate speech, and gun violence. Against the backdrop of a tumultuous period in the country, a local community that has faced violence and trauma works to heal and grapple with what it means to be stronger than hate.

David Santamaria: Harriet

David Santamaria: Harriet

A film about filmmaker David Santamaria's Aunt Harriet, who was one of New York City’s first female cab drivers.

Debra Schaffner: Curse of the Mutant Heirloom

Debra Schaffner: Curse of the Mutant Heirloom

A daughter excavates decades of estrangement from her Holocaust-survivor mother, fueled by a less visible predator – the BRCA cancer gene mutation. Robots and aliens join their human inspirations in this hybrid documentary about family, forgiveness, and expendable body parts.

Emile Bokaer: We Play Cinema

We Play Cinema is a multi-generational documentary self-portrait by Emile Bokaer, created in collaboration with his father Tsvi Bokaer. Blending contemporary observational footage with Tsvi’s long-lost 1960s 16mm films, son and father place past and present in direct conversation, to illuminate the lasting truth: cinema is as essential as life itself.

Emma D. Miller: Father Figures

When a retired theater director begins posting deeply intimate conversations with his growing collection of ventriloquist’s dummies, his daughter embarks on a quest to understand his motivations and repair a fraught relationship — using puppets.

Eva Ilona Brzeski: Daughterland

Eva Ilona Brzeski: Daughterland

A father attempts to hide his mysterious past for his whole life. His daughter spends 35 years trying to get him to share his secrets.

Hervé Cohen: This Little Song

Haunted by a childhood melody sung in Arabic by his Jewish grandmother, a filmmaker embarks on a journey across Algeria to rediscover a lost song and unravel the echoes of a once-thriving harmony between Jews and Muslims.

Hilla Medalia: Missing Silver

On the morning of October 7th, renowned peace activist Vivian Silver was assumed to be abducted by Hamas from her kibbutz near Gaza. As Israel launches a devastating attack on the Gaza Strip, Vivian’s sons, and beloved Jewish and Palestinian friends, struggle to hold onto Silver's vision and hope for peace.

Holden Kepecs: Star in the Ring

Holden Kepecs: Star in the Ring

Documentary film that tells the story of the time when Jews dominated the sport of boxing.

Jeremy Borison: Alliance

When Yeshiva University’s Pride Alliance sued the institution for denying them an LGBTQ club on campus, the university rushed the case to the Supreme Court claiming an attack on their religious freedom. Now the subject of national attention, YUPA’s fight for equality has become the symbol for LGBTQ issues in the Orthodox community and across the country.

Joanna Rudnick: Brother

Joanna Rudnick: Brother

A filmmaker's brother opens up about his recovery from opioid use disorder.

Karin Kainer: Hot Spot

An intimate five-year coming-of-age journey follows Gen Z international students, some from enemy nations, whose paths first cross at a controversial boarding school for peace in conflict-ridden Israel during a global pandemic. As they transition into adulthood, navigating love, war, loss, and national conflict, their fragile friendships face the ultimate test: an uncertain and divided future.

Ken Paul Rosenthal: Julie Vinograd: Between Spirit and Stone

Ken Paul Rosenthal: Julie Vinograd: Between Spirit and Stone

A documentary about a street poet who threw bubbles instead of bricks.

Kit Vincent: Red Herring

When 24-year-old director Kit Vincent receives a terminal diagnosis, his first instinct is to turn on his camera and embark on an emotional, spiritual and darkly humorous journey.

Lauren Greenhall: Zelda

Lauren Greenhall: Zelda

In an ultra-orthodox Jewish community where married women wear wigs, the charismatic owner of the a beloved wig salon gets divorced and begins resenting the practice.

Leah Galant: Landscapes of Memory

Interweaving the stories of a Holocaust-survivor descendant, a Nazi-descendant historian, Palestinian artists in exile, and the filmmaker's own reckoning with her father’s ALS, "Landscapes of Memory" explores the complexities of Holocaust remembrance and the uses and abuses of memory culture.

Malena Barrios: Call Me Lucky

Malena Barrios: Call Me Lucky

Marc is the protagonist of the 8mm family films shot for over twenty years by his father Henry, a successful Holocaust survivor obsessed with filming happy moments.

Meg Moritz: Isobel Lennart: The Forgotten Funny Girl

She fled a Jewish past only to rediscover it in her last and most famous work, "Funny Girl." Now meet Isobel Lennart, the Hollywood screenwriter who forever changed the way audiences view Jews and women on the silver screen.

Meika Rouda: My Peeps are Whiteys

Meika Rouda: My Peeps are Whiteys

MY PEEPS ARE WHITEYS is an exploration of identity and how we become who we are. Meika Rouda was adopted as a newborn and never knew her biological background until she was in her thirties and trying to make a family of her own. Because she has exotic looks, she often had people tell her what ethnicity they thought she might be, and in turn sometimes took on those identities to see if they fit.

Melinda Hess: Letter from Cloudcroft

Melinda Hess: Letter from Cloudcroft

Finding an old suitcase, filmmaker, daughter Melinda Hess looks inside and finds an unopened letter from the piles of her Jewish family’s ephemeral materials. The discovery of the 1946 letter inspires her journey to uncover an American Space Race story as seen through a daughter and Father story lens, revealing the true story of how we got to the moon from the rocket slave camps of the Holocaust.

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