Film Festival Submissions

The Call for Entries for the 45th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is now open. Apply via FilmFreeway.

Regular Deadline: January 31, 2025
Shorts (40 min and under): $35
Features (over 40 min): $50

Extended Deadline: February 28, 2025
Shorts (40 min and under): $45
Features (over 40 min): $60

Founded in 1980, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF), presented by the Jewish Film Institute (JFI), is the largest and longest-running festival of its kind and a leader in the curation and presentation of new film and media exploring the complexity of Jewish life and identity around the world. SFJFF showcases more than sixty films each year for thousands of in-person and online audience members and industry professionals, curating a bold lineup of dramatic and documentary features, episodic programs, and experimental, and animated projects that reflect life through a Jewish lens. Since its founding in 1980, SFJFF has cultivated and championed emerging and established filmmakers throughout their careers, helping to launch new artistic voices on a national and international scale.

The Festival presents dramatic, documentary, television, experimental, and animated features and shorts that explore fresh, nuanced perspectives around topics of Jewish history, culture, identity, and more. SFJFF is an Academy Award® qualifying film festival in the Documentary Short category.

Choices regarding venues and/or virtual screenings will be made in accordance with county mandates to prioritize the health of our staff, guests, and attendees.

Regular Deadline: January 31, 2025
Shorts (40 min and under): $35
Features (over 40 min): $50

Extended Deadline: February 28, 2025
Shorts (40 min and under): $45
Features (over 40 min): $60

Submissions
Please submit your film through FilmFreeway here.

Exhibition Formats and Subtitling
The Festival screens DCP only. DCPs with Open Captions and Audio Description files are strongly preferred. All non-English language films must be subtitled in English.

Premiere Status
Feature-length narratives and documentaries should not screen or broadcast in Northern California prior to or during the Festival. Please note that Northern California includes the metropolitan areas of Sacramento, San Jose, Contra Costa, Monterey, and the Napa/Sonoma Valleys, as well as the San Francisco Bay Area.

We prefer films to have been completed within two years of the current Festival dates to fit with our mission to showcase new independent American and international Jewish-subject cinema.

Preview Screener Format
Preview screeners must be provided in the form of a video link. We strongly encourage preview screeners to be submitted with English closed captions available. Screeners of foreign-language works are required to be subtitled in English.

Rough Cuts
SFJFF accepts rough cuts of almost completed films as Festival entries. Rough cut entries must have an expected completion date of May 1, 2025 or earlier.

Authorization
By submitting your film via FilmFreeway, you are affirming that you are authorized to submit this film to the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival  and hold the sole responsibility of copyright clearance of any copyrighted material in the film. If your film is accepted, you also authorize us to use a two-minute promotional excerpt from it for festival promotion and on the web in perpetuity.

Notification
Applicants will be notified of the status of their submission by email no later than June 13, 2025.

The Jewish Film Institute champions bold films and filmmakers that expand and evolve the Jewish story for audiences everywhere. As the presenter of the annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF), the world’s first and most revered event for independent Jewish storytelling, JFI celebrates the spirit of film, inquiry, independence, collaboration, community, and inclusion to turn conversation into action, reframe understanding of Jewish cultures and identities, and nurture networks of filmmakers and artists. The Institute’s filmmaker services include the competitive, year-long Filmmaker Residency and the JFI Completion Grants, which provide finishing funds to jury-selected projects. Free, online programming includes a popular series of Monthly Online Shorts, the JFI On Demand streaming service, and the JFI Film Archive, a curatorial history of SFJFF.