EXCLUSIVE: The Jewish Movie Institute has introduced six initiatives that may obtain a complete of $80,000 in JFI Completion Grants, together with the newest movie from Oscar-shortlisted director and two-time Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Ondi Timoner.
Timoner’s All God’s Youngsters tells the story of a rabbi and a protestant minister in New York who unite their congregations to “fight the rising pressure of their Brooklyn communities.” The rabbi, Rachel Timoner, is Ondi Timoner’s sister.
The nonprofit JFI, which “champions daring movies and filmmakers that increase and evolve the Jewish story for audiences in every single place,” has distributed extra $400,000 in grants to filmmakers since 2020. Together with Timoner’s mission, newly introduced recipients embrace Amber Fares’ Coexistence, My Ass!, a documentary that follows Israeli comic Noam Shuster Eliassi “as she struggles to create a one-woman comedy present known as Coexistence, My Ass! about racism, sexism, warfare, peace and… her ass.” See under for the total listing of 2024 grantees.
“We’re pleased with this robust new slate which options intimate human tales of Israelis and Palestinians, African Individuals, Jewish Individuals, and non secular and secular communities working in the direction of co-existence and understanding towards the backdrop of an especially polarized world,” JFI’s Govt Director Lexi Leban and Marcia Jarmel, JFI’s Director of Filmmaker Providers, mentioned in a joint assertion. “We consider this slate of movies has the highly effective means to deepen empathy and understanding, articulate complexities, and open hearts and minds. At a difficult time for the distribution of unbiased Jewish movies, JFI stays dedicated to offering a continuum of assist all through a movie’s life-cycle.”
Amongst previous initiatives that earned JFI completion grants are A Crime on the Bayou, directed by Nancy Buirski; My Title Is Andrea, directed by Pratibha Parmar; A Photographic Reminiscence, by director Elizabeth Rachel Seed, and Sabbath Queen, directed by Sandi DuBowski.
Sabbath Queen served because the closing evening movie on Sunday on the San Francisco Jewish Movie Competition, a program of the Jewish Movie Institute.
“The JFI Completion Grant for Sabbath Queen got here at a important time throughout our tough reduce after we wanted to assist our in depth enhancing group to take the movie to completion. This was a 21-year work with an infinite quantity of fabric – 1,800 hours plus 1,100 hours of archival! – so I used to be grateful for as a lot useful resource as attainable,” mentioned DuBowski. “JFI is on the forefront of rebuilding the philanthropy crucial for the sector of us storytellers to translate the Jewish expertise to the world throughout these difficult and delicate instances. JFI is making it attainable for our various voices and tales—in all their complexity, pleasure, ache, and critique—to be urgently heard. And JFI being each funder and presenter is essential as works have to get made and seen. I had a Bay Space Premiere of my first characteristic Trembling Earlier than G-d in 2001 at SFJFF and now, 23 years later, I’m returning to the Competition with Sabbath Queen as Closing Night time.”
The profitable initiatives for 2024 had been chosen from amongst 12 finalists, narrowed from a pool of 92 candidates. The 2024 jury included Lisa Fruchtman, Academy Award-winning editor and documentarian; Meredith Lavitt, founding father of Swirl Manufacturing and veteran government of the Sundance Institute, and Su Kim, an Emmy- and two-time Peabody Award-winning producer.
“As jurors, we’re honored and conscious of our privileged place,” Fruchtman, Lavitt, and Kim famous. “As we journeyed by means of these movies, we discovered lovely visions, opening home windows into the center of our common shared humanity. Tales that join us to the lives of others vividly with intimacy and respect. We thought-about many questions on nuanced and shocking Jewish identities, histories, and tradition. We had been impressed by the standard and innovation of all these beautifully crafted movies.”
The 2024 JFI Completion Grants are made attainable by means of assist of the Albert & Judith Goldberg Basis, Sandee Blechman and Steven Goldberg, Michelle Marcus, the Righteous Individuals Basis, the Nancy P. & Richard Ok. Robbins Household Basis, the Jonathan Logan Household Basis, and Sheri Cohen and Charles Inexperienced.
These are the 2024 JFI Completion Grant winners:
All God’s Youngsters
Ondi Timoner, United States, Documentary Characteristic
Produced by David Turner
Winner, Harvey Goldberg Memorial Award for a movie that impacts our understanding of Jewish historical past, life, and tradition.
‘All God’s Youngsters’
Courtesy of Jewish Movie Institute
To fight the rising pressure of their Brooklyn communities, a Rabbi and a Reverend group as much as unite their congregations. As their religion is shaken, each congregations wrestle to not let their variations drive them aside.
Ondi Timoner is a critically-acclaimed American filmmaker and a two-time recipient of the Grand Jury Prize on the Sundance Movie Competition – for her documentaries DIG! (2004) and We Dwell in Public (2009). In 2022, Ondi was Shortlisted for the Oscar, Nominated for the Emmy for Distinctive Advantage and the WGA Award for Finest Documentary, and awarded the lifetime achievements for Excellence in Observational Filmmaking from DocNYC and The Humanitas Award for her movie Final Flight House (2023).
Bulletproof Stockings
Nicole Teeny, United States, Documentary Characteristic
Produced by Nicole Teeny
Perl and Dalia in ‘Bulletproof Stockings’
Courtesy of Jewish Movie Institute
Perl and Dalia make waves creating “Bulletproof Stockings,” the primary all-female Hasidic rock band. They problem gender normsin their Hasidic group as their world consideration will increase however their diverging visions and ideologies threaten the band’s unity and future.
Nicole Teeny is a queer Slamdance award-winning filmmaker. Her debut characteristic documentary, Bible Quiz, was theatrically launched and performed on Netflix, Sundance Channel, 50+ festivals, and at US Embassies/Consulates. Nicole’s narrative quick Interval, from theIn Bloom anthology on Paramount+, led to her invitation to talk on the United Nations. Her upcoming podcast collection is forthcoming on ESPN 30 for 30. Nicole’s work has been showcased at a whole bunch of museums, festivals, and galleries worldwide together with the Venice Worldwide Movie Competition, OutFest, and Berlin Movie Competition, and supported by the Tribeca Movie Institute, LEF Transferring Picture, Berlin Movie Competition’s Berlinale abilities, PGA Create Lab, Breaking By the Lens, If/Then, InsideOut, and the USA Division’s Training & Cultural Affairs.
Coexistence, My Ass!
Amber Fares, United States, Documentary Characteristic
Produced by Amber Fares, Rachel Leah Jones
Winner, Envision Award for the movie’s singular means to ascertain a world freed from prejudice and hate.
‘Coexistence, My Ass!’
Courtesy of Jewish Movie Institute
Coexistence, My Ass! follows Israeli comic Noam Shuster Eliassi as she struggles to create a one-woman comedy present known as “Coexistence, My Ass!” about racism, sexism, warfare, peace and… her ass. With hatred and violence in Israel/Palestine turbo-charged like by no means earlier than, “co-existence” already a problematic time period now seems like a nasty joke — so the place does she go from right here?
Amber Fares is an award-winning documentary filmmaker greatest recognized for her directing debut Pace Sisters (HotDocs, 2015), which aired internationally on Netflix, Al Jazeera, and RAI. Her subsequent credit embrace We Are Ayenda (WhatsApp/Amazon,) which received the Finest Director on the Sundance Model Storytelling convention. She additionally directed an episode of Gutsy (AppleTV, 2022), Reckoning with Laughter (AJ Witness), and was a co-director on Convergence: Braveness Beneath Disaster (Netflix). She was a Supervising Producer on an episode of America Inside Out with Katie Couric (Nationwide Geographic), and a Co-Producer and Cinematographer on the Peabody-winning The Choose (PBS). Fares was a Sundance Momentum Fellow and Sundance Modifying and Story Lab Fellow, and is predicated in New York.
Monk in Items
Billy Shebar, United States, Documentary Characteristic
Produced by Billy Shebar, Susan Margolin
Winner, Albert & Judith Goldberg Award for a movie that celebrates Jewish arts and tradition.
‘Monk in Items’
Courtesy of Jewish Movie Institute
Meredith Monk—Jewish-American composer, performer, and director—is likely one of the unsung artistic geniuses of our time. That includes interviews with Björk and David Byrne, Monk in Items illuminates Monk’s wildly unique vocabulary of sound and imagery.
Billy Shebar is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker recognized for Darkish Matter (2007) starring Meryl Streep and Liu Ye, winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at Sundance; and Excessive Midday on the Waterfront (2022), that includes John Turturro and Edward Norton, which premiered on the 2022 Telluride Movie Competition and was broadcast on Turner Basic Films and HBO. TV credit embrace the acclaimed docuseries DarkNet (Showtime, 2016); Physician’s Orders (Discovery+, 2021); and the Webby-winning Trump Bites (The New York Occasions, 2018-21).
Oxygen
Netalie Braun, Israel, Narrative Characteristic
Produced by Adi Bar Yossef, Aviv Ben Shlush
‘Oxygen’
Courtesy of Jewish Movie Institute
With the outbreak of a brand new warfare in Israel, a soldier is about to enter Lebanon. His mom refuses to attend for unhealthy information and decides to take issues into her personal palms.
Netalie Braun is a poet and an acclaimed movie director. Her final movie obtained Israel’s Academy Award for Finest Documentary. She was the Inventive Director of Israel’s Ladies Movie Competition. At the moment, Braun is a senior lecturer and the Head of the MFA program on the Steve Tisch College of Movie and Tv at Tel-Aviv College.
Wednesdays in Mississippi
Marlene McCurtis, United States, Documentary Characteristic
Produced by Marlene McCurtis, Pleasure Silverman
Discretionary Grantee
‘Wednesdays in Mississippi’
Courtesy of Jewish Movie Institute
Wednesdays in Mississippi is the little-known story of the first-ever all-women nationwide civil rights program. The movie traces the efforts of multifaith Northern Black and White girls activists who flew into lethal Mississippi in the course of the Freedom Summer time in 1964, clandestinely supporting integration efforts and native Black girls’s management to seed group financial and academic empowerment.
Marlene McCurtis is a present Lavine/Higher Angels Fellow and Firelight Media Documentary Lab and Sundance Sustainability Humanities fellow alum whose quick Right here I’ll Keep was co-produced by Firelight Media and Subject of Imaginative and prescient and premiered on the New Orleans Movie Competition. She has produced and directed Emmy-nominated collection for A&E, PBS, and NatGeo. At the moment, she is in post-production on Wednesdays in Mississippi, her first unbiased, self-directed characteristic documentary, chosen for the Cucalorus Movie Competition Work-in-Progress Lab, the Athena Movie Competition Work-in-Progress Lab, and the Oxford Movie Competition Movie Feminine Administrators Retreat. Her newest quick, The Circle, a collage of spoken phrase and motion, written and carried out by system-impacted artists, has screened on the Social Justice Movie Competition, the World Peace Competition, the Monologue and Poetry Worldwide Movie Competition, and the Justice on Trial Movie Competition.