Pitch + Kvell: 2025 JFI Filmmakers in Residence

Brian Becker: Meet Me At The Mall

About the Film: When Albanian immigrant Leo Karruli semi-accidentally purchases a Pennsylvania mall in 2023, he uproots his life and tries his hand at reviving it. Utilizing the aesthetics of 90s Hollywood mall movies and an incredible cache of archival, Meet Me At The Mall creates a thought-provoking and humorous dialogue between the mall’s unexpected socialist Jewish origins, its storied past, and its uncertain future.

Brian Becker is a New York-based filmmaker who directed and produced Time Bomb Y2K (co-directed with Marley McDonald) which premiered on HBO in December, 2023. The film was nominated for a Cinema Eye award and its lengthy festival run included True/False Film Festival, Hot Docs, Sheffield DocFest, IDFA, Camden International Film Festival, and DocNYC. Brian served as archival producer on Free Chol Soo Lee, MLK/FBI, Spaceship Earth, and The Fourth Estate, and as co-producer on the series Bobby Kennedy for President. Brian is a 2022 Doc NYC 40 Under 40 recipient, Impact Partners Producing Fellow, Points North Fellow, and a FOCAL Jane Mercer Researcher of the Year award nominee. Before turning to production, he worked as a mosquito ecologist.

Shaina Feinberg: None of This Matters

About the Film: Struggling filmmaker Shaina Feinberg travels to Maine to interview trailblazing TV director and teacher Joan Darling. Over years of filming, Shaina uncovers Joan’s final storytelling wish and enlists her former mentees and collaborators to fulfill it, only to find the 90-year-old legend has a few plot twists of her own. Blending vérité, archival and interviews, the film is a hilarious meditation on art, legacy and what it means to build a life.

Shaina Feinberg is an award-winning American filmmaker and writer known for her bold, personal storytelling. She spent her twenties making a stoner-punk sketch show (The Spew), has been on This American Life, had a column in The New York Times (2019–2024), created two original series for Audible and is the author of three books. She’s directed two short docs for The New York Times: A Brief History of Hating My Face (2023) and I Almost Quit My Career for My Kids. Then I Met Joan Darling. (2025). Her doc, My Mom’s Eggplant Sauce (2022), opened the Aspen Film Festival, won her a best-director award and is now taught at university in the U.K. Her short Cleo From 8:20 to 2:35 received a New York Foundation for the Arts finishing grant in 2024 and her film, We Should Eat (2024), won the Reboot Studios grant in 2023, the Caz Matthews Award at SeriesFest in 2025 and, to date, has gone to 26 film festivals. Her award-winning films have played at film festivals around the world, including the Tribeca Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Aspen, Hot Docs, Palm Springs, Provincetown and many more. She is a 2025 resident at JFI with her film None of This Matters, a feature documentary about her friendship with Joan Darling, the first woman to direct prime-time TV.

Toby Perl Freilich: Maintenance Artist

About the Film: “After the Revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?” challenged Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Crashing through the boundary between art and action, in 1977 she became the first artist-in-residence at NYC’s Department of Sanitation, collaborating with city workers to inject art right into the city’s bloodstream.

Toby Perl Freilich co-produced/co-directed Moynihan, broadcast in 2024 on PBS’ American Masters series, and an L.A. Times Critic’s Pick. Freilich wrote/directed/produced Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment, deemed “fascinating” by the NY Times. She co-produced and wrote the HBO/Cinemax feature documentary, Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers, for which she was nominated for a news and documentary Writing Emmy. Freilich was co-producer of the PBS Emmy-nominated Resistance: Untold Stories of Jewish Partisans. She is a contributing writer to Tablet, Sh’ma, the Jewish Review of Books and the Forward, where she received a Rackower Award for excellence in Jewish Journalism.

Leah Galant: Landscapes of Memory

About the Film: Interweaving the stories of a Holocaust-survivor descendant, a Nazi descendant historian, Palestinian artists in exile, and the filmmakers’ own reckoning with her familial trauma, Landscapes of Memory explores Holocaust remembrance and the uses and abuses of memory culture. 

Leah Galant is a Jewish director and Fulbright Scholar based in New York whose storytelling focuses on unexpected narratives that challenge perceptions. In 2022, she was recognized as one of DOC NYC’s 40 under 40. Leah’s directorial debut On the Divide premiered at the Tribeca 2021 Film Festival and was broadcast on POV PBS on April 18th 2022. She was a Sundance Ignite and Jacob Burns Fellow where she created Death Metal Grandma (SXSW 2018) about a 97 year old Holocaust survivor named Inge Ginsberg who sings death metal which won “Best Documentary” at the American Pavilion at Cannes Film Festival, and is a NY Times Op Doc. While at Ithaca College in 2015 she was named one of Variety’s “110 Students to Watch in Film and Media” for her work on The Provider that follows a traveling abortion doctor in Texas (SXSW 2016, Student Emmy Award) and Beyond the Wall about a formerly incarcerated individuals re-entry process.  She is currently a member-owner at Meerkat Media cooperative production company and working on her second feature length film on memory culture.  

Karin Kainer: Hot Spot

About the Film: An intimate six-year coming-of-age journey tracing Maher, Lola, Tom, Iman, Luka, and Noam—Gen Z teens from across the globe, including enemy nations—who first meet at a radical peace boarding school in conflict-ridden Israel during COVID. As they grow up on camera, love, war, and identity test whether friendship can survive a divided world.

Karin Kainer is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and producer who creates riveting documentaries that have garnered worldwide critical acclaim. Screened internationally in theaters and on television (BBC, Amazon Prime, FRANCE1, AL Jazeera, ARTE), her range of titles include - Award winner best documentary series of 2023 in the Documentary Forum Awards competition -  'Tiberias under the Red Line' which aired in August 2023 on kan 11-The public broadcaster received rave reviews and was also one of the most watched series in the last year. 'Shula & Geuala' 3 part series (2025), ‘Kosher Beach’ (Israeli Oscar 2020, won Krakow FF 2020 and BEIJIN FF, World premiere DOC-NYC 2019, Docaviv 2019), 'Rinascita' (winner of Haifa FF 2011), ‘Das iz der valt’ (winner short Docaviv 2010), 'SKATE OF MIND' (Sundance 2011, winner LAMA FF Los Angeles), 'South Wind on Hilton Beach' (Haifa FF 2006, Hotdocs 2007).

Hilla Medalia: Missing Vivian Silver

About the Film: Peace activist, Vivian Silver, dedicated her life to reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. On October 7th she was murdered in her home in Kibbutz Be'eri, becoming a victim of the very disaster she had warned against. In the wake of her death, as Israel begins its brutal attacks on Gaza, Vivian’s sons along with her Jewish and Palestinian friends struggle to hold onto her vision for peace, wondering what would Vivian do?

Hilla Medalia is a Peabody Award-winning director, producer, writer and has received six Emmy award nominations. Her projects have garnered critical acclaim and screened internationally in theaters and on platforms including HBO, Netflix, MTV, PBS, BBC and ARTE. Her range of titles includes: Children no More: “Were and are Gone" (2025, DocNYC), "Adaptation to Darkness" (Docaviv, Palm Sptings 2025), "ADA - My Mother, the Architect" (JFF, 2024), "Tropicana" (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Jerusalem Film Festival) "Wanted: Roni Kalderon"  (DocAviv, 2024), "Mourning in Lod" (MTV Documentaries, DocAviv, 2023) "Innocence" (Venice International Film Festival, 2022), "H2: The Occupation Lab" (Hotdocs, Fipa, 2022), "Love & Stuff" (HotDocs, DOCNYC, POV 2020), "Leftover Women" (Tribeca, ARTE, 2019), "The Oslo Diaries" (Sundance, HBO, ARTE, 2018), "Muhi" (IDFA, HotDocs, 2017),  "Censored Voices," (Sundance, Berlinale, 2015), "The Go Go Boys" (Cannes, 2014), "Web Junkie" (Sundance, POV, BBC, 2014), "Dancing in Jaffa" (Tribeca, IFC, 2013). Hilla is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and she holds an M.A. from Southern Illinois University.