Film Archive | Jewish Film Institute

Exhibition Series

2020 Filmmakers in Residence
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2024 JFI Completion Grants
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2026 JFI Completion Grants
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JFI Filmmakers in Residence
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Film Type

Animation
Documentary
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Television Series

Unforgettable Face

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Unholy

A girl goes to her family's Passover Seder for the first time since being put on a feeding tube for a chronic illness.

Unknown Secrets: Art and the Rosenberg Era

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Unpromised Land

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Unruly Women: Jewish Female Characters on TV - A conversation with Emily Nussbaum, New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize-winner

When we look at current and near-recent TV offerings is it fair to say there's a "boom" of female Jewish characters afoot? In what ways are stereotypes morphing and evolving and, in pondering this, what can we learn about ourselves and the culture in which we live? Join the nation’s most illustrious and insightful television critic—New Yorker writer Emily Nussbaum—for a conversation that delves into never before charted territory.

Unsettled Land (Dreamers)

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Unspoken

When a closeted, religious teenager finds a love letter from before the Holocaust written to his grandfather by another man, he discovers that he might not be alone.

Untitled Danny Kaye

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Unwinding the Thread

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Urban Doodles

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Utopia in Four Movements

Utopia in Four Movements is an epic multimedia performance piece by Academy Award nominee Sam Green (The Weather Underground) and aural mix-master Dave Cerf. Originally conceived as a work-in-progress for a still uncompleted film, Utopia has evolved instead into a one-of-a-kind stage show that threads together a century’s worth of dizzying sounds and images into a deeply moving meditation on our world’s seemingly shrinking idealism.

Valeria is Getting Married

Valeria arrives in Tel Aviv from Ukraine for a marriage hastily brokered by her brother-in-law. A smart, superbly acted chamber piece about the gender politics inherent in an arranged marriage.

The Vanishing Soldier

An Israeli soldier flees the Gaza battlefield and heads to his girlfriend in Tel Aviv.

Vantage Points: Perspectives From Sapir College

A collection of student shorts from Sapir College in southern Israel, a multicultural community near Gaza that was directly impacted by the attacks on October 7th.

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.

Very Semi-Serious

Famed and would-be cartoonists return to the New Yorker week after week to vie for the approval of the acerbic, egotistical, funny and deeply human cartoon editor Bruce Mankoff. From the neurotic Roz Chast to the offbeat Bruce Eric Kaplan, these humorists draw us into their sometimes eccentric, sometimes morose, always delightful world views. Like binging on a year’s worth of New Yorker cartoons, Very Semi-Serious delights and leaves you wanting more.

Vessel

The heroine of this documentary, Rebecca Gomperts, embodies tikkun olam, repairing the world through your actions. The founder of Women on Waves, Gomperts builds a floating clinic to offer abortions where the procedure is banned, but her maiden voyage ends in disaster. She changes strategy, exploiting loopholes to teach women a World Health Organization–endorsed protocol to give themselves abortions at home. Her ingeniousness makes for a surprisingly invigorating tale.

A Victim's Perspective

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Victoria Day

As the holidays approach, Canadian teenager Ben Spektor is living the dream: he goofs around with a Dazed and Confused cast of pals, counts the days until Bob Dylan comes to town and sees signs that his longtime crush might notice his existence. The unforeseen consequences of a five-dollar loan abruptly shatter his carefree lifestyle and force a choice between the sweet naivete of youth and the maturity of adulthood.

Viehjud Levi

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Vienna Is Different

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Villa Touma

Writer/director Suha Arraf presents a neo-Buñuelian, darkly comic vision of three unmarried Christian sisters living in a West Bank estate, proudly clinging to their family’s faded glory. Into their lonely time warp enters their fragile teenage niece, the orphaned Badia, who is quickly subsumed into their repressive existence. But when Badia falls in love with a handsome Muslim singer, buried emotions and simmering resentments come crashing to the surface.

The Village of Peace

An engrossing documentary portrait of African Americans who left their home in Chicago in the late 1960s and migrated to the Negev desert where they now refer to themselves as African-Hebrew Israelites, heeding Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to embark upon an exodus to the Promised Land. The thriving utopian community bases itself on teachings from the Torah and practices polygamy, natural birth, veganism and a rigorous adherence to physical and emotional health.

Vilna

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Violet Sweets

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The Violin Upstairs

A short animated documentary that tells the story of the previous owners of the filmmaker's violin.

Vishneva, Belarus Soviet Union Poland

Silent images from the interview of a Holocaust survivor superimposed with typed memories describe the unspoken pain borne by a father and son through more than half a century.

Vishniac

This breathtaking and exceptionally well-crafted documentary about Russian-Jewish photographer Roman Vishniac (1897–1990) captures his transformation from a free-spirited scientist in Berlin to one of the world’s greatest photographers.

A Visit To Lod

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The Visitor

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A Voice Without a Face

Assaf Basson’s personal documentary pays tribute to his father, an Iraqi Jew who led a double life in Israel as a renowned singer of Arabic music and an agent for Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad. Known by his stage name Magdi, Yitzhak Basson is a man of contradictions: between his love for Arabic culture and his mission as a Mossad agent, and between his life as a singer and as a family man.

Voices from Gaza: By God's Will

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Voices from the Attic

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Volevo Solo Vivere (I Only Wanted to Live)

Volevo Solo Vivere offers a unique window into the Italian Jewish Holocaust experience. This outstanding documentary follows nine Italian citizens who endured the Italian racial laws and survived deportation and internment at Auschwitz. Masterfully directed by Mimmo Calopresti and executive produced by Steven Spielberg, it features searing testimonies; most compelling is the story of Liliana Segre of Milan, whose dignity and articulation of her experience are quite remarkable.

Voyage of the Damned

Haunting in its relevance for today’s refugee crisis, this star-studded 1976 film evokes the hopes and fears of a people uprooted from their homes en route to a promised land on the MS St. Louis, the ship that brought 937 Jews escaping Germany on the eve of the Shoah in 1939 to the shores of Cuba, where they are forbidden to disembark (only to then be similarly rejected by the United States and Canada)

Voyages

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