Film Archive | Jewish Film Institute

Exhibition Series

2020 Filmmakers in Residence
2020 JFI Completion Grants
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2022 JFI Completion Grants
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2023 JFI Completion Grants
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2024 JFI Completion Grants
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2025 JFI Completion Grants
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2026 JFI Completion Grants
Cinegogue Summer Days
JFI Filmmakers in Residence
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Pre-2020 Filmmaker In Residence
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Silent Film w/ English Intertitles
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Film Type

Animation
Documentary
Episodic
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Feature
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Shorts Program
Television Series

Filtered By: USA Clear All

Willem & Frieda

Stephen Fry tenderly researches artists Willem and Frieda, who used their skills to forge identity cards that saved thousands during WWII.

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe

The 1960s’ most famous, rabble-rousing and radical defense attorney is put on the witness stand by two of his two daughters in this riveting documentary. For Sarah and Emily Kunstler, it’s an effort to understand and reconcile with a man of contradictions who defended not only civil rights activists, the Chicago 7 and American Indian militants, but also accused rapists, terrorists and assassins. An exciting portrait of every revolutionary’s ideal= lawyer. Followed by social justice discussion at the Castro.

Winner | Take Action Spotlight

Reality Winner, a brilliant young misfit from Texas, faces a moral dilemma working as an NSA contractor: whether to expose Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Women Laughing

The New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly talks, draws, and laughs with some of the most celebrated and groundbreaking cartoonists at the iconic magazine as they reflect on the essential work of women cartoonists today and over the last century.

Women of the Wall

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Woody Before Allen

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Wrestling Jerusalem

Writer/actor Aaron Davidman takes us on a whirlwind journey that presents competing narratives of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. He gracefully embodies 17 characters, moving deftly from male to female, Palestinian to Israeli, American to European. Davidman’s ability to empathize makes him an excellent tour guide. Masterfully shot backstage during a live performance, and in the desert, the film conjures cafes, buses and settlements as well as the deeply human stories they contain. —Stephanie Rapp

Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner

Academy Award-winning director Freida Lee Mock spent more than three years capturing the public work and private life of America’s most prodigiously talented, intellectually ferocious, politically engaged, proudly homosexual and gleefully Jewish playwright, Tony Kushner. Following him through a particularly fertile period in his life, from just after 9/11 in New York to the eve of the 2004 election, Mock makes a strong case for why he just might be a candidate for Living National Treasure.

WWW.RACHELORMONT.COM | Next Wave Spotlight

Rachel doesn't realize she has grown up in captivity working for an advertising agency where her job is to assess Mommy 6.0 - her favorite pop star.

XCLD: The Story of Cancel Culture | Local Spotlight

XCLD is a nuanced, humorous, and provocative look at the controversial and oft misunderstood issue of Cancel Culture, featuring interviews with Judy Gold, Loretta J. Ross, and Marc Maron.

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.

Yael Luttwak: My Favorite Neoconservative

Yael Luttwak (SFJFF 2012 Filmmaker in Residence) returns home and turns her camera on her father, famed Department of Defense military strategist Edward Luttwak. The film offers a rare and complex glimpse of beltway politics through these political polar opposites.

Yelena's Story

Seventeen-year-old Ukrainian émigré Yelena Shuster negotiates two worlds, her own and her grandparents’, in Yelena’s Story, the newest film by the teenage participants in SFJFF’s New Jewish Filmmaking Project, produced by Citizen Film.

The Yes Men Fix the World

Exposing corporate greed and environmental degradation is serious business—but that doesn’t mean you can’t be hilarious going about it. Meet the Yes Men—eco-prankster/activists Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno—who pose as mild-mannered corporate executives, then brazenly infiltrate major media outlets and shareholder meetings, skewering their targets with spectacularly satirical stunts. In this “screwball comedy for the apocalypse,” the guys take on the likes of Dow Chemical, Halliburton and post-Katrina profiteers.

Yiddish Folksingers on Miami Beach

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Yiddish Karaoke

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Yiddish Theater: A Love Story

Before World War II, there were 12 Yiddish theaters in New York City. Now there is only one, the Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre. Dan Katzir has created a poignant, tightly structured portrait of Zypora Spaisman, founder and grand dame of Folksbiene, who died in 2002. A natural-born storyteller, Katzir fills in the details of Spaisman’s life with telling anecdotes and interviews from the world of Yiddish theater.

Yiddish: The Mame-Loshin

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Yidishe Gauchos

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Yidl in the Middle: Growing Up Jewish in Iowa

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Yidl Mitn Fidl (Yiddle with his Fiddle)

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Y-Love

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Yoav Potash: Among Neighbors

In a town where history has been silenced, an eyewitness to murder speaks out in search of the boy she loved.

Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Goldberg

She’s the most famous woman in America you’ve never heard of. The story of television pioneer Gertrude Berg is told with humor and insight in Aviva Kempner’s sparkling film biography. Creator and star of the early TV hit The Goldbergs, Berg combined comedy and social commentary, introduced endearing Jewish characters to middle America and took on the McCarthy blacklist. Yoo-Hoo combines rare clips with celebrity interviews to create a star-studded social history of an American trailblazer. Followed by panel at the Castro.

You Are Free (Ihr Zent Frei)

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You Won't Miss Me

Loner, rebel, flirt, enemy, lover, that’s Shelly Brown, a 23-year-old alienated urban misfit recently released from a psychiatric hospital. Winner of the 2009 Gotham Award for Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You, director Ry Russo-Young and actress Stella Schnabel present a fractured character study of a contemporary young Jewish woman at odds with the world and herself.

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This moving and inspiring documentary recounts the brave struggle of Zemene Tiget, a young Ethiopian girl with a life-threatening spinal condition and the Jewish doctor who makes it his personal challenge to keep her alive. As Zemene begins to heal, she takes a journey to New York to tell her hopeful story then makes a pilgrimage back to the isolated village that had once shunned her.

Zlateh the Goat

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Zoe Potkin: Daddy's Girls

Daddy's Girls follows the return of an estranged father who, with advanced Parkinson’s and nowhere to go, is taken in by the women he once left behind—his ex-wife and four daughters—suddenly tasked with keeping him alive.

Zusha

When three ultra-Orthodox millennials started a folk band in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, they had no intention of making it their lives.

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