Film Projects
Film is one of the ways Jewish arts is experienced by the most people. Founded in Los Angeles, over our 36-year history, 20% of JCI's sponsored projects have been films. JCI has fiscally sponsored films that appeared in wide distribution such as the 2025 film October 8 by Wendy Sachs, which was the fifth highest-grossing documentary released theatrically in the U.S. during 2025. We also sponsor student films such as Cinnamon Shops, a short animated work based on the life of the writer Bruno Schulz, murdered in the Holocaust. The JCI sponsored film, TORN: The Israel-Palestine Poster War on NYC Streets captures the emotional fallout of the now-iconic “KIDNAPPED” poster campaign and is nominated two New York Emmy® awards. Consider supporting one of JCI's current film projects below.
1564 Stories
Documentary film that traces the journey of 1,564 Torah Scrolls found in the decaying storage of an abandoned synagogue outside of Prague, and illuminates how they survived the destruction of the Holocaust, how they came to London's Westminster Synagogue in 1964, and how 900 of these Scrolls came to reside in American Synagogues today.
Bronia
Short documentary about Bronia Brandman, a 94-year-old Auschwitz survivor who revisits her life through an unlikely friendship with a 30-year-old Holocaust educator, Isaac Simon. This film not only promotes awareness of the Holocaust, but explores themes of inter-generational trauma, Jewish culture, and identity.
Cinnamon Shops
Short film period drama with magical realism, connecting the everyday life and rituals of a Jewish family, translating the poetics of Bruno Schulz into cinematic language, based on a careful reconstruction of 1920s Poland and shot in a historic Jewish quarter in Trebic (Czech Republic) with an authentically preserved architecture.
OyKay: Jewish Legends of Prague
Seven claymation shorts in English, Czech, and Hebrew explore Jewish Prague with Esti and Yosi, curious Jewish youngsters with much to share. Journeying across centuries, they speak with transformative figures, including Rabbi Loew, Mordechai Maisel, Franz Kafka, Gerty Theresa Cori, Karel Polacek, Max Wertheimer, Max Brod, Egon Ervin Kisch, Lenka Reinerova, Hana Volavova, Fredy Hirsch, and Madeleine Albright.
Poisoned Ivies
Feature documentary that explores the growing crisis within American higher education—and its implications for democracy. Set at Columbia University in the wake of October 7, 2023, the film examines how campuses once grounded in free inquiry are increasingly shaped by polarization, rising tensions, and student radicalization.
Remember My Name
Animated film about Holocaust survivor, Nathan Poremba, the last Jew of Wieliczka, based on the memoir "My Name is Staszek Surdel," written by the son of the survivor. Chronicles a Jewish boy's resistance and resilience, then rediscovery of his Jewish soul after remembering his Jewish name after six long years hiding in plain sight in Poland.
Schmoolie the Deathwatcher
A dark-comedy-forward feature film with glimmering elements of magic, set against the backdrop of Purim in Los Angeles. Schmoolie, an Orthodox Jewish teen, bumbles through high school geekdom with his misfit friends dodging the school bullies and crushing on Yael. He spends a night alone guarding a body awaiting burial, and ends up fighting for his own life.
SHAMATi
Your childhood. In music. In SHAMATi, an American Jewish folk band that’s more Grateful Dead than traditional meets the last living generation of composers in Israel who wrote songs like Oseh Shalom Bimromav and Yerushalayim Shel Zahav. Covering 5,000 years of history and 75 years of the Jewish state, this travel-comedy film asks: what does it mean to be authentically Jewish?
The Mensch (Feature Film)
A darkly comic thriller about a young Mexican-American rabbi whose faith in G-d (and in herself) is tested when she loses a priceless Holocaust-era Torah — forcing her into a wild, one-night odyssey of biblical proportions to retrieve it, confront a rising wave of extremism, and save her community. In the spirit of the Coen Bros’ FARGO.
TORN: The Israel-Palestine Poster War on NYC Streets
After Hamas kidnapped 251 people from Israel on October 7, and as Israel’s war in Gaza unfolded, a conflict thousands of miles away erupted on New York’s walls. TORN captures the emotional fallout of the now-iconic “KIDNAPPED” poster campaign - a grassroots act of solidarity that quickly became a flashpoint, igniting fierce confrontations between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian New Yorkers.
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