JFI Filmmakers in Residence

Film Type

Animation
Documentary
Experimental
Narrative
Television Series

Country

Category

Feature
Short
Television
Web Series

Amanda Rubin: The Third Reich of Dreams: Dreaming Under Dictatorship

From Weimar Activist to dream collector to New York celebrity stylist, the untold story of one woman’s undercover mission to collect evidence against the Nazis. A uniquely prophetic and penetrating insight into the psychological effects of totalitarianism.

Brian Becker: Malls of America

"Malls of America" traces the rise, fall, and potential reinvention of the most quintessentially American habitat: the enclosed shopping mall.

Emile Bokaer: We Play Cinema

We Play Cinema is a multi-generational documentary self-portrait by Emile Bokaer, created in collaboration with his father Tsvi Bokaer. Blending contemporary observational footage with Tsvi’s long-lost 1960s 16mm films, son and father place past and present in direct conversation, to illuminate the lasting truth: cinema is as essential as life itself.

Emma D. Miller: Father Figures

When a retired theater director begins posting deeply intimate conversations with his growing collection of ventriloquist’s dummies, his daughter embarks on a quest to understand his motivations and repair a fraught relationship — using puppets.

Hervé Cohen: This Little Song

Haunted by a childhood melody sung in Arabic by his Jewish grandmother, a filmmaker embarks on a journey across Algeria to rediscover a lost song and unravel the echoes of a once-thriving harmony between Jews and Muslims.

Hilla Medalia: Missing Silver

On the morning of October 7th, renowned peace activist Vivian Silver was assumed to be abducted by Hamas from her kibbutz near Gaza. As Israel launches a devastating attack on the Gaza Strip, Vivian’s sons, and beloved Jewish and Palestinian friends, struggle to hold onto Silver's vision and hope for peace.

Jeremy Borison: Alliance

When Yeshiva University’s Pride Alliance sued the institution for denying them an LGBTQ club on campus, the university rushed the case to the Supreme Court claiming an attack on their religious freedom. Now the subject of national attention, YUPA’s fight for equality has become the symbol for LGBTQ issues in the Orthodox community and across the country.

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.

Leah Galant: Landscapes of Memory

Interweaving the stories of a Holocaust-survivor descendant, a Nazi-descendant historian, Palestinian artists in exile, and the filmmaker's own reckoning with her father’s ALS, "Landscapes of Memory" explores the complexities of Holocaust remembrance and the uses and abuses of memory culture.

Shaina Feinberg: None of this Matters

When a struggling filmmaker befriends an unassuming, elderly director, she discovers a Hollywood legend whose unique model for teaching has influenced some of the most iconic artists over the past 50 years.

Toby Freilich: I Make Maintenance Art

What happens when high art meet trash? Watch this first feature documentary about Mierle Laderman Ukeles, globally-renowned artist-in-residence at NYC’s Sanitation Department. Religiously observant, Ukeles’ humanistic approach to Jewish tradition inspires her largely secular work.

Udi Nir & Sagi Bornstein: The First Lady

Israeli transgender pioneer Efrat Tilma had to flee the country as a teenager. Now in her seventies and a celebrated activist, she must fight for her rights once again, while the country spirals into political and social regression.

Click here for information about the JFI Filmmakers in Residence program