Jewish Film Institute Unveils 2021 Grant Recipients (EXCLUSIVE)
The Jewish Film Institute has selected six projects for its second cycle of Completion Grants Program, Variety has learned.
JFI, the Bay Area curatorial voice for Jewish film and media, announced the grants at the virtual awards ceremony for the 41st San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
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This year, JFI has awarded $100,000 in film completion grants, ranging from $5,000 to $30,000, to filmmakers who are expanding and evolving the Jewish story for audiences “everywhere in every genre — narrative, documentary, short, episodic program and web series.”
Recipients include “Remember This,” “1341 Frames of Love and War,” “The Liegnitz Plot,” “Sons of Detroit,” “A Reel War: Shalaal” and “I Will Take Your Shadow.”
Directed by Jeff Hutchens and Derek Goldman, “Remember This” stars David Strathairn as Jan Karski in a true story of a reluctant World War II hero and Holocaust witness.
Ran Tal’s “1341 Frames of Love and War” documentary follows Israel’s celebrated war photographer, Micha Bar-Am, on a journey of self-doubt and questioning, while Dan Sturman’s “The Liegnitz Plot” follows Gary Gilbert, a writer-producer on sitcoms including the “Seinfeld” pilot, as he flies halfway around the world to return a stamp collection stolen by the Nazis to its rightful owners.
Another documentary, Jeremy Xido’s “Sons of Detroit,” tells the story of two boys — one Black and one white — raised as cousins in Detroit. When the boys’ lives take radically different turns, they each return to the city over 20 years later to reckon with the loss of home and family. “A Reel War: Shalaal,” directed by Karnit Mandel, revolves around an Israeli archive researcher who discovers a confiscated Palestinian film archive, and Ayala Shoshana Guy’s “I Will Take Your Shadow” is an animated experimental autobiography about Guy’s own family in the 1930s.
“Awarding our grants to these compelling and imaginative projects is a fitting culmination to the 41st San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and our hope is to present the completed films at a future JFI event in the not too distant future,” said JFI program director Jay Rosenblatt.
Photo: “The Liegnitz Plot”
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