JFI Filmmakers in Residence

Filmmaker Residency Year

2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026

Film Type

Animation
Documentary
Episodic
Experimental
Feature
Narrative
Short
Shorts Program
Television Series

Country

Category

Feature
Short
Television
Web Series

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.

Leigh Jurecka: A Night at the Stone Burlesk

Leigh Jurecka: A Night at the Stone Burlesk

When a filmmaker marries a former child magician, she finds herself entering an eccentric family of performers and illusionists.

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.

Marc Smolowitz: The Lonely Child

Marc Smolowitz: The Lonely Child

THE LONELY CHILD is a feature documentary that tells the story of a little-known Yiddish lullaby “Dos Elnte Kind” written inside the Vilna Ghetto during the Holocaust.

Maya Cueva: A Rebel Without a Pause

Maya Cueva: A Rebel Without a Pause

A Rebel Without a Pause shines a light on Dr. Quentin Young, a Jewish doctor from Chicago, who teamed up with the Black Panther Party and its Chairman Fred Hampton throughout the 1960s—and fought the FBI at great personal cost—to bring healthcare to the most vulnerable Americans.

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.

Nico Opper: The F Word

Nico Opper: The F Word

Watch the journey unfold in this short comedic docuseries about one queer couple's journey to parenthood through the foster-to-adoption process. Along the way they seek out advice from other fost-adopt families and expand their search in ways they never imagined.

Nora Mariana Salim: Alina

Nora Mariana Salim: Alina

As Nazis separate children from their parents in the Warsaw Ghetto, a gang of women risks everything to smuggle their friend’s three-month-old baby to safety. Inspired by true events. Starring Alia Shawkat (ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, SEARCH PARTY), Edin Gali (MAD MEN), Rebeca Robles (BETTER THINGS), Erika Soto (VIDA), and Mark McCullough (LOGAN LUCKY).

Rebecca Pierce: Half Freedom

Rebecca Pierce: Half Freedom

Two African refugee activists fight against their community’s planned mass deportation from Israel, struggling alongside their Israeli and Palestinian neighbors.

Renée Wilson: The 13th Percent

Renée Wilson: The 13th Percent

The 13th Percent is a personal documentary exploring filmmaker Renée Wilson’s unexpected discovery of her non-Jewish African American family’s 13% Ashkenazi Jewish heritage in a 2018 DNA report, which the report attributed to either a grandparent or a great grandparent. The revelation offered a tantalizing clue to a longstanding family mystery, the identity of Wilson’s paternal great-grandfather and his family.

Russ Finkelstein: Our Home Is Not Of This World

Russ Finkelstein: Our Home Is Not Of This World

Our Home Is Not Of This World follows the work of a medical examiner’s office in Texas that identifies people who die crossing the border, revealing its personal, political and spiritual significance.

Sam Radutzky & Josh Fruend: Joyva

Joyva, the 113-year-old, family-run candy company, a beloved household name amongst Jewish Americans that’s woven into the fabric of their traditions, is at risk of going out of business, along with its legacy and four generations of dreams, which the great-grandchildren must now fight to save.

Sari Gilman: One Family

Sari Gilman: One Family

ONE FAMILY is about the wildly divergent views on Israel that exist within the filmmaker's own Jewish family. A hybrid of fiction and nonfiction, it is a meditation on the meaning of home and belonging.

Sergio Maza: Echoes of Foreign Films, The Talbots' Legacy

Sergio Maza: Echoes of Foreign Films, The Talbots' Legacy

Echoes of Foreign Films is an intimate portrait of Dan and Toby Talbot's personal and professional life and their extraordinary contribution to the art film industry, and a cinematic journey through some of the most influential foreign movies that the Talbots brought to the U.S. and Canada.

Shaina Feinberg: None of this Matters

When a struggling filmmaker befriends an unassuming, elderly director, she discovers a Hollywood legend whose unique model for teaching has influenced some of the most iconic artists over the past 50 years.

Simon Mendes: Wrestling with Legacy: The Carlebach Story

Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach was a spiritual and musical icon for 20th-century Jews. What will happen to his cherished legacy after posthumous sexual abuse allegations?

Steve Pressman: Holy Silence

Steve Pressman: Holy Silence

HOLY SILENCE, a documentary film from Emmy-nominated director Steven Pressman, takes a fresh look at a topic that has sparked controversy for decades. During the years leading up to World War II, what was the Vatican's reaction to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany? And after the war began, how did the pope respond to the horrors of the Holocaust?

Theo Rigby: Si Pudiera Quedarme / If I Could Stay

Theo Rigby: Si Pudiera Quedarme / If I Could Stay

When undocumented mothers Jeanette and Ingrid face deportation and separation from their young children, they and their communities rally support to keep them safe despite the risks. A story of courage and allyship, Si Pudiera Quedarme is a timely look at the transformative power of communities uniting for justice.

Toby Freilich: Maintenance Artist

What happens when high art meet trash? Watch this first feature documentary about Mierle Laderman Ukeles, globally-renowned artist-in-residence at NYC’s Sanitation Department. Religiously observant, Ukeles’ humanistic approach to Jewish tradition inspires her largely secular work.

Udi Nir & Sagi Bornstein: The First Lady

Israeli transgender pioneer Efrat Tilma had to flee the country as a teenager. Now in her seventies and a celebrated activist, she must fight for her rights once again, while the country spirals into political and social regression.

Varda Bar-Kar: Janis Ian & The Art of Song

Varda Bar-Kar: Janis Ian & The Art of Song

In the mid-60s, Janis Ian, a tiny, teenage Jewish singer-songwriter from New Jersey, scores a hit ("Society's Child," 1966) about an interracial relationship. The song launches her illustrious career but also ignites controversy, and she plunges into an emotional tailspin–only to emerge from the ashes with an even bigger hit ("At Seventeen," 1975) about body shaming.

Yael Bridge: Los Últimos Judíos de Guantánamo / The Last Jews of Guantanamo

A brief glimpse into the lives of the dwindling but passionate community of the Jews of Guantanamo.

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