Recipient of a 2023 JFI Completion Grant
Recipient of the 2023 Harvey Goldberg Memorial Award
Filmed over 20 years, Sabbath Queen follows Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie's epic journey as the dynastic heir of thirty-nine generations of Orthodox rabbis who rejects his destiny and becomes a drag-queen rebel, a queer father, and the founder of Lab/Shul: an everybody-friendly, God-optional, artist-driven, pop-up experimental congregation. Sabbath Queen joins director Sandi DuBowski and his rabbi, Amichai, on a lifelong and cinematic quest to creatively and radically reinvent religion, ritual, and love for a challenging, rapidly changing twenty-first century.
Description provided by grantee.
Sandi DuBowski is the Director/Producer of Trembling Before G-d, Producer of A Jihad for Love, and Co-Producer of Budrus. His award-winning work has screened at Sundance, Berlin, Tribeca, Toronto and over 200 festivals, had theatrical release in over 150 cities, aired on BBC, The Sundance Channel, PBS, ZDF-Arte, and been funded by over 60 foundations including The Creative Capital Foundation, The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, The Steven Spielberg Righteous Persons Foundation, and Cinereach. He is Good Pitch U.S. Outreach Director, a partnership of The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and BRITDOC, which has leveraged over $9M for documentaries and campaigns. He was a media strategist with The Sundance Institute DFP at The Skoll World Forum, attended TEDIndia, and was a Mentor at BAVC Producer’s Institute. He speaks, consults, serves on panels, and leads workshops on turning movies into movements at Tribeca, True/False, Sundance, Toronto, Berlin, Sheffield, Silverdocs, IFP, and Docaviv, and launched Films That Change the World www.filmsthatchangetheworld.com to engage people through global events. He is in production on The Amichai Film Project, a new film about a 21st century spiritual innovator for our skeptical, secular digital generation funded by The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program.