Winner of the 2023 Momentum Award from the Jewish Film Institute and Jewish Story Partners
Mati is an aspiring chaplain on track to finish her yearlong residency in the spiritual care department at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. She offers emotional support and spiritual care to patients wrestling with uncertainty, trauma, and grief. And she is doing so in 2020 and 2021, the two deadliest years in U.S. history. Finding balance becomes Mati’s daily fight, especially when, as her supervisor Rev. David puts it, "if your bandwidth is stretched, you don't have the room inwardly to metabolize the harder stuff that comes at you." It’s no surprise that Mati herself needs support and guidance, as does her supervisor, and his supervisor. What does care look like when everything around you seems broken?
Luke Lorentzen (Midnight Family, U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Cinematography, 2019 Sundance Film Festival) proves himself as a deeply respectful and empathetic documentarian. Thoughtfully inquisitive, Lorentzen is unafraid of intimacy, yet always careful not to trespass anyone’s boundaries with his camera. A Still Small Voice is a meditation on faith, loss, and professional sustainability, that successfully finds hope and meaning in seemingly hopeless situations.
Co-created by the Jewish Film Institute and Jewish Story Partners, the JFI/JSP Momentum Award is an annual accelerator grant given to a jointly-selected documentary film for its piercing exploration of Jewish culture, life, and experience.
Luke Lorentzen is an Emmy Award–winning documentary filmmaker and a graduate of Stanford University's department of Art and Art History. His film Midnight Family, about a family-run ambulance business in Mexico City, won over 35 awards globally and was shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2020. He is the co-founder of the independent production company Hedgehog Films with Kellen Quinn.