Film Archive | Jewish Film Institute

Exhibition Series

2020 Filmmakers in Residence
2020 JFI Completion Grants
2021 Filmmakers in Residence
2021 JFI Completion Grants
2022 Filmmakers in Residence
2022 JFI Completion Grants
2023 Filmmakers in Residence
2023 JFI Completion Grants
2024 Filmmakers in Residence
2024 JFI Completion Grants
2025 Filmmakers in Residence
2025 JFI Completion Grants
2026 Filmmakers in Residence
2026 JFI Completion Grants
Cinegogue Summer Days
JFI Filmmakers in Residence
JFI/JSP Momentum Awards
Pre-2020 Filmmaker In Residence
SFJFF 1981
SFJFF 1982
SFJFF 1983
SFJFF 1984
SFJFF 1985
SFJFF 1986
SFJFF 1987
SFJFF 1988
SFJFF 1989
SFJFF 1990
SFJFF 1991
SFJFF 1992
SFJFF 1993
SFJFF 1994
SFJFF 1995
SFJFF 1996
SFJFF 1997
SFJFF 1998
SFJFF 1999
SFJFF 2000
SFJFF 2001
SFJFF 2002
SFJFF 2003
SFJFF 2004
SFJFF 2005
SFJFF 2006
SFJFF 2007
SFJFF 2008
SFJFF 2009
SFJFF 2010
SFJFF 2011
SFJFF 2012
SFJFF 2013
SFJFF 2014
SFJFF 2015
SFJFF 2016
SFJFF 2017
SFJFF 2018
SFJFF 2019
SFJFF 2021
SFJFF 2023
SFJFF 2024
SFJFF 2025
SFJFF 2026
SFJFF Madrid
SFJFF Moscow
WinterFest 2019
WinterFest 2026

Country

Argentina
Australia
Austria
Belarus
Belgium
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Brazil
Bulgaria
Canada
Chile
China
Colombia
Cuba
Cyprus
Czechia
Czechoslovakia
Denmark
Egypt
Ethiopia
Finland
France
Georgia
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
India
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Latvia
Lebanon
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malaysia
Mali
Mexico
Morocco
Netherlands
Norway
Palestine
Palestinian Territories
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Slovakia
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Tunisia
Turkey
Uganda
Ukraine
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
USA
Uzbekistan
Venezuela

Language

Albanian
Amharic
Arabic
Bambara
Berber
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Cambodian
Cameroonian
Catalan
Chinese
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Farsi
French
Georgian
German
Gikuyu
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Igbo
Italian
Japanese
Kazakh
Ladino
Latvian
Lithuanian
Mandarin
Moroccan
Norwegian
Patois
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Romany
Russian
Silent
Silent Film w/ English Intertitles
Slovak
Spanish
Swahili
Swedish
Tagalog
Thai
Tigrinya
Turkish
Ukrainian
Yiddish
Zaghawan

Film Type

Animation
Documentary
Episodic
Experimental
Feature
Narrative
Short
Shorts Program
Television Series

Jews in Shorts: Relationships

Relationships in various configurations make up this moving and sometimes raucous collection of dramatic and comedic narrative shorts. Each short in this collection is quite memorable and don’t be surprised if you find yourself discussing them and laughing about them with your friends.

Jews In Toons: An Uproarious Evening with Krusty, Kyle and Other Favorites

About This Film

The Jews of Djerba: A Pilgrimage to Ghriba

About This Film

Jews of Iran

After the 1979 Islamic revolution, more than 80 percent of Iran’s Jews abandoned their ancestral land. This film is a loving portrait of the remaining Jewish communities.

The Jews of Winnipeg

About This Film

Jews Under the Red Star

About This Film

JewToons

About This Film

Jewtown

About This Film

Jewz N the Hood

About This Film

JFI Filmmaker Residency Showcase

Since 2012, the JFI Filmmaker Residency has provided creative, marketing, and production support for independent filmmakers. JFI residents are in various stages of completion on their projects whose work promotes the exploration and understanding of Jewish identity and culture. This year’s filmmakers Nora Mariana, Theo Rigby, Eva Ilona Brzeski, Yoav Potash, and Charene Zalis will present clips and trailers of their works in progress and share insight into their creative process in a conversation moderated by programmer Joshua Moore.

Joann Sfar Draws from Memory

Preceded by People of the Graphic NovelAt just 39 years of age, the prolific Joann Sfar has published 150 graphic novels, including the French best-seller The Rabbi’s Cat, and in 2010 directed a biopic about Serge Gainsbourg. Sam Ball’s film Joann Sfar Draws from Memory tracks the graphic artist’s odyssey through the Algerian and Eastern European Jewish heritage that serves as the wellspring of his work. A short prologue about the Jewish kids behind Superman precedes the film. [MINIGUIDE 72/70]

Joanna

Polish director Feliks Falk spins a gripping story about Joanna, a Polish woman to whom fate presents a split-second choice: whether to hide a young Jewish girl she finds sleeping in a church. Joanna, a piano teacher waiting to hear news of her soldier husband, takes the child home and they embark on a relationship that helps to heal their respective losses. But Joanna faces difficult decisions if Rose is to survive.

Joanna Rudnick: Brother

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

Joe Papp in Five Acts

Joe Papp in Five Acts is the story of New York’s streetwise champion of the arts who founded the Public Theater, introduced interracial casting to the American stage and brought us free Shakespeare in the Park, Hair and A Chorus Line. He was a father figure to a generation of theater artists who speak here eloquently in interviews including Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline. A must see for anyone who loves the theater.

About This Film

About This Film

About This Film

About This Film

About This Film

About This Film

After his engagement falls apart on the evening of his birthday, Joshy’s (Thomas Middleditch, Silicon Valley) best buddies rally together to pull off a much-needed guys-only weekend for their grieving friend. As the partying heats up, Joshy and company continue to distract themselves from their troubles until they finally have to confront the elephant in the room: their feelings. Male bonding has never been more complex . . . and comically awkward.

Journey to Augustow

About This Film

Jude

About This Film

The Juggler

A man finds himself running from both the police and his own troubling memories in this powerful postwar drama. Holocaust survivor Hans Muller (Kirk Douglas, in a harrowing performance) relocates to Israel but cannot overcome the devastating psychological effects of the war. More than just a character study, The Juggler is a unique and fascinating portrait of a young Israel that portends the societal fissures that are to come.

A Jumpin' Night in the Garden of Eden

About This Film

June Zero

Set in Israel in the days immediately following the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, June Zero explores the pivotal event through the interconnected stories of three people.

Just 45 Minutes from Broadway

This highly dramatic comedy is legendary independent filmmaker Henry Jaglom’s tribute to actors and the families who endure them. One daughter, the only member of the family to reject a life in show business, brings home her “civilian” fiancé (Judd Nelson) after a year of estrangement. What follows is a day and night fraught with drama as family members, self-consciously and with great gusto, play out the drama of their own lives. [MINIGUIDE 72/70]

Just an Ordinary Jew

When a Jewish journalist in Hamburg is asked to talk to schoolchildren about what it means to be Jewish in today’s Germany, it triggers a private emotional avalanche. This tour-de-force monologue (from the director of Downfall) wrestles with the painful and also funny contradictions of modern German Jewish identity, displaying the restless intellectual energy of a rant: part Tony Kushner, part Spalding Gray, but with a very contemporary German accent. Panel follows in SF.

Kaddish

About This Film

Kaddish for a Friend

How do we know who our enemies are? A 14-year-old Palestinian immigrant living in Berlin, thinks he knows: It’s the grumpy old Russian Jew living in the apartment above him. But when he acts out on that belief and goes too far, he finds himself in trouble with the police and caught up in circumstances that make him question where those beliefs really come from. [MINIGUIDE 65/70]

A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff - Song & Dance

An artistic excommunication set on Wall Street in 2008. A Kaddish For Bernie Madoff is a mystical meta-musical about the greatest financial fraud in history, as seen through the eyes of musician/poet Alicia Jo Rabins.

A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff - Song & Dance (Castro)

An artistic excommunication set on Wall Street in 2008, A Kaddish For Bernie Madoff is a mystical meta-musical about the greatest financial fraud in history, as seen through the eyes of musician/poet Alicia Jo Rabins.

Kafkas

In the small hours of the night, Fran cold-calls men in search of a soulmate named Kafka.

Kalamazoo

About This Film

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.

Kedma

In veteran director Amos Gitai’s majestic narrative, the Kedma, a European cargo freighter packed with concentration camp survivors, heads towards Palestine as underground Jewish forces prepare for its arrival and British soldiers position themselves to stop its unauthorized landing. Gitai recreates a tough, anguished reconstruction of an episode in the founding of the state of Israel, which profoundly impacted Jews and Palestinians .

...