JFI On Demand | Jewish Film Institute

Exhibition Series

2020 JFI Completion Grants
2021 JFI Completion Grants
2022 JFI Completion Grants
2023 JFI Completion Grants
2024 Filmmakers in Residence
2024 JFI Completion Grants
40th Holiday Festival
Cinegogue Summer Days
Co-Presentation 2007
Co-Presentation 2008
Co-Presentation 2009
Co-Presentation 2010
Co-Presentation 2013
Co-Presentation 2014
Israel in Motion
JFI/JSP Momentum Awards
Magnes
Member Screening 2005
Member Screening 2006
Member Screening 2011
Member Screening 2012
Member Screening 2013
Member Screening 2014
Member Screening 2015
Member Screening 2016
Member Screening 2017
Member Screening 2018
Member Screening 2020
Member Screening 2021
SFJFF 1981
SFJFF 1982
SFJFF 1983
SFJFF 1984
SFJFF 1985
SFJFF 1986
SFJFF 1987
SFJFF 1988
SFJFF 1989
SFJFF 1990
SFJFF 1991
SFJFF 1992
SFJFF 1993
SFJFF 1994
SFJFF 1995
SFJFF 1996
SFJFF 1997
SFJFF 1998
SFJFF 1999
SFJFF 2000
SFJFF 2001
SFJFF 2002
SFJFF 2003
SFJFF 2004
SFJFF 2005
SFJFF 2006
SFJFF 2007
SFJFF 2008
SFJFF 2009
SFJFF 2010
SFJFF 2011
SFJFF 2012
SFJFF 2013
SFJFF 2014
SFJFF 2015
SFJFF 2016
SFJFF 2017
SFJFF 2018
SFJFF 2019
SFJFF 2021
SFJFF 2023
SFJFF at JCCSF
SFJFF Madrid
SFJFF Moscow
Stories She Tells
Sundance
Urban Adamah
WinterFest 2014
WinterFest 2015
WinterFest 2016
WinterFest 2017
WinterFest 2018
WinterFest 2019
Winterfest 2020
WinterFest 2021
WinterFest 2022
YBCA

JFI On Demand

Anti-Semitism
Black History Month
ChaiFlicks
Cinegogue Sessions
Comedy
Coming of Age
Curator Picks
Filmmaker Distributed
Films for the High Holidays
Holocaust
Israeli Films
J Weekly Top 10 Israeli Films
JFI Completion Grantee
JFI Resident
LGBTQ
Religion & Spirituality
Short Films
Social Justice
Streaming Service
WinterFest
Women's History Month
Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance

Film Type

Animation
Documentary
Experimental
Narrative
Television Series

Program Type

Cinegogue Sessions
Cinegogue Summer Days
Festival
Member Screening
Next Wave
Stories She Tells
Sundance Film Festival
WinterFest 2018
WinterFest 2019
WinterFest 2020
WinterFest 2021

S#x Acts

Naïve teen Gili (Sivan Levy) changes schools and is determined to improve her social status by hooking up with the most popular guys.

Safe Spaces (After Class) | Next Wave Spotlight

"Safe Spaces" is a comedy about a NYC professor who spends a week re-connecting with his family while defending his reputation over controversial behavior at a college.

Sand Storm

Layla, a teenager in a Bedouin village in South Israel has a cell phone, drives a car, and has a secret boyfriend at the college she is attending. She watches from a distance as her mother accepts her father’s second wife into their family, prompting questions about her own future. This stunning first feature by Israeli director Elite Zexer sympathetically captures the struggle between tradition and modernity in the beautifully stark Negev desert landscape.-Lexi LebanWinner, World Cinema Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival 2016

Sarah's Key

About This Film

Saviors in the Night

Based on true events, this bravura drama powerfully records one memorable instance of moral courage under desperate conditions. Menne Spiegel, a German Jew, meets his old army comrade Heinrich Aschoff on the eve of a mass deportation of Jews in 1943. Aschoff, a Catholic farmer with a conscience, agrees to shelter Spiegel’s wife Marga and their daughter in spite of the deadly risk to his own family. Saviors in the Night, based on Marga’s best-selling memoir, relates the extraordinary true story of the families’ perilous years together. Join us for Opening Night in San Francisco with special invited guests Marga Spiegel, director Ludi Boeken and principal actor Lia Hoensbroech. Followed by Opening Night Bash at Swedish American Hall.

Science Fair

Nine optimistic and ambitious high schoolers compete for spots at Intel’s International Science Engineering Fair.

In Search of Israeli Cuisine

Renowned chef Michael Solomonov explores a diverse world of food drawn from more than 100 cultures. Chefs, farmers, vintners, cheese makers and home cooks discuss their roots and show specialties that both preserve and update traditional recipes using global inspiration. Uniquely and lovingly prepared shakshuka, boreka, maqluba, couscous and a kugel that challenges expectations are just a few of the irresistible dishes featured. Warning: This movie will make you hungry!

The Secrets

Naomi, daughter of a revered rabbi, comes to Safed—where the mystical texts of the Kabala were received—to study in an orthodox women’s seminary. Eagerly diving into serious Torah study, she catches the eye of the flirtatious Michelle. Assigned to bring meals to the mysterious Anouk (Fanny Ardant), ill and seeking spiritual redemption, Michelle and Naomi embark upon a secret journey of purifying rituals and forbidden love.

Seder-Masochism

Loosely following a traditional Passover Seder, the events of Exodus are retold by Moses, Aharon, the Angel of Death, Jesus, and the director's own father. But there's another side to this story: that of the Goddess, humankind's original deity. Seder-Masochism resurrects the Great Mother in a tragic struggle against the forces of Patriarchy.

The Sentence

An intimate documentary about the impact a mother’s incarceration for a nonviolent drug offense has on her family.

The Settlers (2016)

In a comprehensive and compelling retelling, award-winning Israeli filmmaker, Shimon Dotan (Smile of the Lamb, SJFFF 1986) traces with remarkable access the history of Israeli settlements in the West Bank since Israel’s decisive victory in the 1967 Six Day War. Using archival footage of the religious zealots and interviews with a diverse range of modern-day settlers, Dotan weaves together the story that entangles the destinies of Israel and the Palestinian people. —Janis PlotkinScreened at Sundance Film Festival 2016

SFJFF41 Closing Night Awards

SFJFF41 Closing Night Awards | JFI Completion Grant Awardees & Festival Award Winners

Shalom Bollywood: The Untold History of Indian Cinema

A compelling tale of Jewish actresses who became a dominant presence in Indian cinema for over forty years.

Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness

Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness presents a riveting portrait of the man who transformed Yiddish from a vernacular language into a literary one and, in the process, gave us much loved characters such as Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof. Interweaving excerpts from Aleichem’s work with interviews and archival photographs and footage, the film brings to life a lost world of Yiddish culture on the cusp of dramatic change.

A Short History of Decay

Nathan can’t get it together. Living in Brooklyn, trying to be a writer, he’s shocked into reality when his father in Florida suffers a stroke.

Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech

This vital and unexpectedly personal exploration of the right to free speech features prominent voices including the filmmaker’s father, Martin Garbus, who discusses his difficult decision as a young Jewish ACLU attorney to defend the rights of American Nazis in Skokie, Illinois. Coolheaded and utterly engaging, the film traces the embattled history of free expression in the U.S., with instructive emphasis on post-9/11 cases.

Shtisel

Love, work, relationships—the Shtisels’ problems are like those of any other family, except that they happen to be haredim, ultra-religious Jews. SFJFF presents the first three episodes of this popular award-winning TV drama set in Jerusalem which has hooked viewers worldwide with its stylish production values, humor, great acting (it stars Michael Aloni, Out in the Dark, SFJFF 2013) and compelling story lines recounted with heartfelt emotion and humor.

Shut Up and Play the Piano

The journey full of megalomania and piano music of Chilly Gonzales: from the Berlin punk scene to the philharmonic orchestras, it's a story of eccentricity which also stars Daft Punk, Drake, Feist, Jarvis Cocker.

Sidewalk

When does it all begin—how do we become who we become? How do we get slotted into our places in the social pecking order? How did any of us survive the trials and tribulations of childhood? These are some of the questions that may pass through your mind while watching Duki Dror’s Sidewalk. It reminds us that the touch of our childhood is with us—and marks us—forever.

Simon & Théodore

Over the course of one night in the streets of Paris Simon and Théodore learn how to accept themselves.

Six Million and One

Israeli filmmaker David Fisher initiates a road trip that becomes an extraordinary family psychodrama for his siblings at the site of the World War II concentration camp where their father Joseph was interned as a young boy. Traveling in a van they laugh at themselves and question their own willingness to go deeper into their family legacy. Stunningly beautiful forests and meadows silently conceal the reality of their father’s untold story. [MINIGUIDE 71/70]

Six Minutes to Midnight

Eddie Izzard and Dame Judi Dench star in this thrilling Hitchockian homage to British spy cinema. In the summer of 1939, influential families in Nazi Germany have sent their daughters to a finishing school in an English seaside town where one of the professors soon uncovers their diabolical scheme and races to tell the truth. But who can he trust?

Sleeping With the Fishes

Alexis Fish’s life is a mess: Her husband is dead, her once successful party planning business is no more and anti-anxiety pills are the only thing keeping her going. When an aunt dies, she must return home and face her ever-disapproving mother and her well-intentioned but overzealous big sister. Writer/director Nicole Gomez Fisher’s delightful debut brings this quirky story of a dysfunctional yet loving Latino Jewish family to uproarious life.

A Small Act

Can a single act of generosity transform a life? As a poor Kenyan boy, Chris Mburu’s life changed forever when a Jewish schoolteacher in Sweden anonymously sponsored his education. Today a Harvard-educated lawyer, he honors his benefactor (and now friend) by providing scholarships in her name to a new generation of promising but desperately poor Kenyan children. A Small Act rivetingly celebrates this inspiring example of “paying it forward.”

...

Need help using JFI On Demand? See our FAQ page.