2023 JFI Completion Grant Recipients

The Jewish Film Institute awarded $85,000 to seven projects in 2023. The third round of JFI Completion Grants announced celebrates a diverse slate of documentary projects selected from a national applicant pool — the largest in the program’s history.

Lisa Kleiner Chanoff is co-founder of Catapult Film Fund. In 2010 Lisa and Bonni Cohen founded Catapult in order to enable important and moving documentary films to get off the ground and to fill a gap in the documentary funding landscape for development support. Lisa has a decades-long commitment to helping projects get off the ground. Before her career in filmmaking, she practiced law in San Francisco and with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. After leaving law practice, Lisa received a master’s degree in Museum Studies and worked with museums in the San Francisco Bay Area. Working with artists at the museum showed her the importance of early funding for producing new work, and she gravitated toward documentary film as a way to combine her interest in policy and creative and artful storytelling. Together with Bonni Cohen, Lisa executive produced Art & Craft, When God Sleeps and the Academy Award-nominated shorts Extremis and Life Overtakes Me. Lisa’s executive producer credits also include documentaries Watchers of the Sky, Brimstone and Glory, and Western (Co-EP), as well as narrative features Burn Country, Fruitvale Station (Co-EP), Loves & Taxes, and The Outside Story. She is president of the boards of SFFILM and Catapult Film Fund, and serves as a board member of photojournalism nonprofit Catchlight. She is an advisory board member of Close Up Initiative, and advisor for the Redford Center. Lisa is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Lacey Schwartz Delgado is an Emmy-nominated producer, writer, director, outreach strategist who draws on her interdisciplinary background to create compelling stories that span documentary and fiction and work with innovative organizations and brands.  Schwartz Delgado is the co-founder of the production company Truth Aid, which produces inspiring and empowering multi-media content to affect social change. Little White Lie, her debut film, a story about uncovering secrets and coming to terms with your identity,  has been distributed worldwide and is now available on iTunes and Amazon prime. She was also the executive producer of the narrative film Difret which was the first film to win audience awards at both the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals. She also directed and produced the viral digital series The Loving Generation for topic.com. Lacey also produced How it Feels To Be Free, which premiered on PBS’s American Masters and was nominated for an Emmy for best documentary film/series.  In July 2021, she hosted, directed and produced BET’s Content for Change Black X Jewish a 30-minute special that examines the connections between anti-semitism and racism and how Black and Jewish communities in America can come together to fight against hate. 

Andrew Abrahams is President of Open Eye Pictures, an award-winning producer/director of creative non-fiction films. He studied at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism and USC's School of Cinema, ultimately receiving a master's degree in Visual Anthropology. His approach emphasizes visual imagery as a way to bridge disparate parts, peoples, and ideas. Andrew’s films include AMERICAN JUSTICE ON TRIAL: PEOPLE V. NEWTON, Oscar-shortlisted and winner of nine top awards including Best Short Documentary at the Pan African Film Festival; THE GROVE, broadcast nationally on PBS and awarded Best Documentary at the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival; and UNDER OUR SKIN, the recipient of seven best documentary awards at international film festivals and Academy Award semifinalist for Best Documentary Feature. His films have garnered numerous awards and been shown on Netflix, HBO, PBS, CBC, the Showtime Networks, and in theaters and film festivals worldwide. Andrew is a past budget director of the film distribution cooperative New Day Films and former board director of the Jewish Film Institute.