Film Archive | Jewish Film Institute

Exhibition Series

2020 Filmmakers in Residence
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2022 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
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JFI Filmmakers in Residence
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Pre-2020 Filmmaker In Residence
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Film Type

Animation
Documentary
Episodic
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Feature
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Shorts Program
Television Series

The Prince and the Dybbuk

Michał Waszyński, director of The Dybbuk (1937), tried on many identities and led a life filled with contradictions.

The Prince of Egypt

SFJFF invites audiences to rediscover this classic for its 25th anniversary. This animated adaptation of the Exodus story features an all-star voice cast, award-winning songs by Stephen Schwartz and score by Hans Zimmer.

Printed Film

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A Private Life

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Probation Time

It may take a village to raise a child, but sometimes it takes a child to knit together a family. Avigail Sperber takes an unflinching look at her adopted Ethiopian sister’s struggles and aspirations while aligning us with the colorful cast of characters that make up their family. Probation Time is an introspective take on the balance each of us must strike between our desire for belonging and independence.

The Producers (2005)

Max is a Broadway producer with a reputation for consistently churning out flops. Leo is a nebbish accountant. Soon after meeting, Leo plants the idea of embezzlement in Max’s head. Before you know it, their get-rich-quick scheme is born. All they have to do is put together the granddaddy of all flops and they’ll be rolling in dough. However, making a disaster isn’t as easy as it seems.

Professional Revolutionary: The Life of Saul Wellman

An admiring, unsentimental portrait of a Brooklyn boy who became a mensch: the legendary socialist, labor organizer, Spanish Civil War vet and tireless activist Saul Wellman.

Professor Mamlock

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Prognosis: Notes on Living - Local Spotlight SFJFF41

When maverick Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Debra Chasnoff is diagnosed with stage-4 breast cancer, she faces injustice as always, with her camera.

Prognosis: Notes on Living - Local Spotlight SFJFF41 (Castro)

When maverick Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Debra Chasnoff is diagnosed with stage-4 breast cancer, she faces injustice as always, with her camera.

Projections of America

Hollywood screenwriter Robert Riskin’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town won him a 1937 Oscar. Less well known is Riskin’s series of short films, produced to aid America’s WWII effort. The films’ American values reflect his own Jewish, left-leaning principles, countering foreigners’ negative stereotypes of United States citizens. With narration by John Lithgow, director Peter Miller skillfully brings this effort to light.

Promise at Dawn

Writer/statesman Romain Gary is plagued by the long shadow cast by the ambitions of his mother.

The Promised Land

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Promises

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Protektor

Set in German-occupied Prague, this visually stunning, highly original thriller explores how much we might compromise for love. Emil accepts a job promotion to be the on-air voice of the Nazi propaganda in order to protect Hana, his Jewish wife. Meanwhile, Hana’s glamorous life as a movie star comes to an abrupt end. As she rebels against her Emil’s attempts to control her every move, Hana sets out on some dangerous adventures.

Protocols of Zion

Since 9/11, an alarming upsurge of anti-Semitic sentiment in the United States and around the world repeats claims that Jews seek world domination--a theory propagated by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a century-old tract that, despite being discredited as a libelous forgery, is still widely available and cited. Veteran documentarian Marc Levin takes a personal odyssey to investigate the persistence of what Elie Wiesel calls "the oldest collective bigotry in history."

Prrride

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A Psalm for Moshe

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Public Defender

A liberal public defender representing January 6th rioters takes on America’s epidemic of division with humanity, restoring trust and accountability one conversation at a time.

Puerto Rican Jew

A Puerto Rican man finds out he is half Jewish after taking a DNA test.

Purim [1996]

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Purity

PURITY depicts the traditional religious observances of mikvah and niddah that have often been disturbing to feminists seeking a new relationship to Judaism. TIKKUN follows Rabbanit Leah Kook’s unique, ecstatic ministry to women in the orthodox community of Tiberias. Followed by performance of an excerpt from Harriet Schiffer Scott’s Late Saturday Night Sunday School. and a panel, Women and Judaism.

Pushcarts and Plantations: Jewish Life in Louisiana

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Quality Balls: The David Steinberg Story

If you’ve never heard of David Steinberg—and even if you have—you’ll be astonished at the scope of his career captured in this very funny doc. The same man whose irreverent routine in 1968 contributed to the demise of the Smothers Brothers show also directed episodes of Seinfeld, Friends and Curb Your Enthusiasm in the 2000s. Steinberg genially recounts his adventures between clips and interviews with comedians he inspired. Preceded by Little Horribles: Road Rage

The Queen Has No Crown

This refreshing documentary navigates the intimate lives of five brothers and their mother, as they experience the pains of exile and the joys of family bonding. Director Tomer Heymann uses home movies and his ever-present video camera to explore both the personal (his coming out as gay, his mother’s sense of abandonment) and the larger politics of belonging, displacement and sexuality in this unusual portrait of an Israeli family.

Queen of the Deuce

An offbeat and extraordinary portrait of Chelly Wilson, the undisputed skin flick matriarch of the “Deuce”, the seedy underbelly of Manhattan that operated on 42nd Street in the 1970s and 80s.

Quest for the Missing Piece,The

This hilarious but serious romp through the debate over circumcision takes us on a bris tour and asks, Why is this ritual so different from all other rituals?

Qui Vive

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A Quiet Heart

In this tense, slow-burning thriller, a young woman finds herself on the dividing line between secular and religious life in Israel while confronting her uncertain future as a promising pianist. Naomi leaves her home in Tel Aviv for a new job in the Haredi neighborhood of Kiryat Yovel. The neighborhood is increasingly hostile to her for being secular, and things only get stranger when she develops a close friendship with a Catholic monk.

Raananah: A World of Our Own

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The Rabbi & Cesar Chavez

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Rabbi Goes West, The

The film follows a controversial Chabad Hasidic rabbi from Brooklyn who moved ten years ago to Bozeman, Montana to bring his brand of Judaism to the American west. It examines Jewish identity in one of the most non-Jewish parts of the country, and sees what happens when other established forms of American Judaism (Reform, Conservative) are challenged by this Hasidic rabbi's undeniably charismatic Chabad presence.

Rabbi on the Block

A Black rabbinical student combats racism, misogyny and gun violence by caring for her community on the South Side of Chicago in this inspiring portrait.

Rabbi Wolff: A Gentleman Before God

Willy Wolff escaped the Nazis, became a renowned British journalist and didn’t go to rabbinical school till he was in his 50s. Now in his 80s, he leads two communities in Germany and still finds time for yoga, learning Russian and enjoying the racetrack. We go behind the scenes to see the beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking life of a deeply religious man who is rarely seen without a twinkle in his eye.

Rabies

Brace yourself for Rabies, Israel’s first-ever horror flick. A young woman with a dark secret finds herself ensnared in an underground trap deep within an Israeli forest by a psychotic killer. Meanwhile, four attractive Israeli youths who took a wrong turn, a grizzled forest ranger and his dog, and a pair of rogue cops get drawn into a roiling ocean of misunderstandings. A ferocious bloodbath ensues. Prepare to squirm.

Rabin in His Own Words

This examination of the life and times of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is constructed largely from archival footage, photographs and interviews, from Rabin’s early days to his tragic death. Director Erez Laufer (One Day After Peace, SFJFF 2012) takes us from Rabin’s childhood, through his experience fighting in three wars, to his assassination, and reminds us of the possibility for peace that remains for those who want it. —Seth Barron

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