JEWISH STORY PARTNERS ANNOUNCES $545,000 IN NEW GRANTS TO  26 DOCUMENTARY FILMS, EMERGING AS A LEADER IN FUNDING INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARIES

2025 NEW GRANTEES

Film descriptions provided by grantees.

All That We Are
Director Ondi Timoner, Producers Morgan Doctor, Sigrid Dyekjær, and Lauren Heimer
World champion triathlete Lesley Paterson and sports psychologist Simon Marshall are an award-winning screenwriting team whose lives are upended when Simon is diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer—the same day they secure their dream project adapting Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. The film follows their race to finish the script and search for a life-saving cure.

Alpha and Omega
Director and Producer Ron Frank, Producer Glenn Kirschbaum
From the 1960s through the 1980s, an unlikely duo – boxer Muhammad Ali and newsman Howard Cosell, a Muslim and a Jew – found their calling sparring about sports on American television. Their good-natured, loving debates not only entertained audiences, but broadcasted a model for defying racism and antisemitism in a world riddled with segregation and hate.

The Day After
Director and Producer Yuval Orr, Director Aziz Abu Sarah, Producers Liel Maghen, Margaux Missika, and Chris Patterson
Amid rising tensions and the outbreak of war, a group of Israelis and Palestinians travel to Northern Ireland to hear an impossible story: how bitter enemies finally made peace.

Dust Bowls and Jewish Souls: Another Side of Woody Guthrie
Director and Producer Steven Pressman
Many know Woody Guthrie as the quintessential Oklahoman balladeer who wrote “This Land Is Your Land,” but few are aware that Jewish culture had a hand in shaping his private life and career. Dust Bowls and Jewish Souls explores Guthrie’s moving relationship with his mother-in-law, prominent Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt, and the impact she had on his songwriting.

The Grandfather Puzzle
Director Ora DeKornfeld, Producers Noémi Veronika Szakonyi and Máté Artur Vincze
A filmmaker creates puzzles of her 100 year-old Hungarian Holocaust survivor grandfather’s storied past, hoping to unlock his memories and bridge the silence that has defined their relationship.

Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny
Director and Producers Jeff Bieber and Chana Gazit, Producer Salme M. López Sabina
Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny illuminates the extraordinary life and work of one of the most influential and fearless political thinkers of the 20th century. Arendt’s time as a World War II political prisoner and refugee generated daring insights about the human condition and totalitarianism, which continue to resonate profoundly today.

Leonard Cohen: Behind the Iron Curtain
Director Eric Bednarski, Producers Birgit Gernböck, Christine Guenther, Amanda Handy, Mark Johnston, and Stanisław Zaborowski
Told through never-before-seen archival footage and unparalleled access to those who were there, Leonard Cohen: Behind the Iron Curtain looks back at the legendary Jewish singer and poet’s ground-breaking 1985 tour of Poland and how his music inspired a generation of Poles struggling to end the rule of the Soviet Union.

The Lonely Child
Director and Producer Marc Smolowitz, Producer Alix Wall
The Lonely Child is a haunting Yiddish lullaby written during the Holocaust, capturing the heartbreak of a mother and daughter torn apart by war. Eighty years later, the daughter of the child in the song embarks on a powerful journey to trace the song’s footprint, uncovering its unexpected impact across generations.

Offcuts
Director and Producer Jacob Fertig, Producer Jaydn Ray Gosselin
Ten years after the death of their disabled child, an aging Jewish couple and their adult daughters confront conflicting memories of the infamous institution where he lived. The redacted life of a boy becomes the subject of collective reckoning as scenes from the past unspool.

The Paradox
Director and Producer Shimon Dotan, Producer Dikla Barkai
Since its foundation, the state of Israel promised to provide a safe haven for persecuted Jews, and many Jews around the world believed that Israel would bring an end to two millennia of antisemitism. The Paradox explores how October 7th and its aftermath seems to have shattered both promises and asks “How did this happen?”

The Sandman is Looking for Tena
Director Esti Almo Wexler, Producer Dr. Elad Wexler
Israeli-Ethiopian filmmaker Esti Almo Wexler journeys back to Ethiopia to investigate her aunt’s mysterious disappearance 40 years ago, during Ethiopia’s brutal military junta. Along the way she delves into family secrets, cultural identity, and the enduring impact of loss.

Sapiro v. Ford
Director and Producer Gaylen Ross, Producer Carol King
In this remarkable 1920s David vs. Goliath story, Jewish lawyer Aaron Sapiro single handedly takes on automobile magnate Henry Ford, challenging Ford’s virulent antisemitic attacks with an unprecedented libel suit that brings Ford to his knees.

Shirley Clarke Film Untitled
Director and Producer Immy Humes
Independent film pioneer Shirley Clarke helped spark a revolution. One of the only women in the all-male club of 1960s experimental filmmakers, she told stories Hollywood wouldn’t. Radical stories. Black stories. Queer stories. And then she herself was cut from the picture. A timely tale of cool, identity, and struggle. With jazz.

Walking Under Palms
Director Adam Weingrod, Producers Alexis Bloom and Kobi Mizrahi
As children, Margot and Lotte flee Nazi Germany to find refuge in the tropical Philippine Islands; but when Japan invades Manila, their newfound sanctuary is shattered. After the war, betrayal and envy between their fathers drives them apart. Now, in their 90s, they get a chance to say goodbye for the last time.

White Rose
Director and Producer Julie Cohen
Excavating the story of Sophie and Hans Scholl, German, non-Jewish resistance leaders beheaded for disseminating potent leaflets countering Hitler’s lies, White Rose follows researchers and German students as they reveal how – in today’s truth-endangered times – the very act of re-exploring a legacy can be revolutionary.

Wilder
Director Kate Novack, Producer Joanne Nerenberg
Young Holocaust survivors Ruth and Izzy Wilder begin to rebuild their lives as refugees on the grounds of a former Nazi concentration camp, where they run a lucrative black market and save up to emigrate to the United States. Their journey spans four generations, as they build a luxury shopping-bag business in New York City and grapple with what it means to be part of a new Jewish-American middle class.

SPRING 2025 REPRISE GRANTEES

Jewish Story Partners provides additional support, in the form of Reprise Grants, to previously awarded projects which have made significant progress. Film descriptions provided by grantees.

The Consequences of Truth
Director Denis Dobrovoda, Producers Betsy Laikin and Silvia Panáková
The Consequences of Truth tells the astonishing story of Alfred Wetzler, a Slovak Jewish hero who, remarkably, escaped Auschwitz to warn the world about the Nazi extermination machine; and yet after the war, was persecuted and erased from history by his own government under Communism.

Judy Chicago Untitled
Directors Kate Amend and Tim Marrinan, Producer Lisa Remington
When Judy Chicago, a trailblazing Jewish feminist artist once dismissed by the establishment, steps into the limelight at 80-something, her iconic six decade fight against women’s erasure from the art world takes on new significance. Seamlessly traversing past and present, Judy Chicago Untitled unlocks an electric story of startling resilience and ingenuity, asking whether art can transform the world?

Left Lane Straight
Director and Producer Caroline Kaye, Producer Deana Morenoff
Following threads of memory through conversations with elders and recovered footage, filmmaker Caroline Kaye weaves together her Sephardic Greek-Jewish family’s fragmented history—from Holocaust survival to immigration—revealing how identity can be reclaimed and reimagined.

Let’s Say Goodbye to the Night
Directors Piet de Blaauw and Jan Pieter Tuinstra, Producer Femke Wolting
How does anyone survive a horrific history beyond imagination? Let’s Say Goodbye to the Night is the unique story of a group of Jewish prisoners who manage to escape from Nazi extermination camp Sobibor, exploring how trauma from eighty years ago defines the lives of their descendants today.

Maintenance Artist
Director and Producer Toby Perl Freilich, Producer Judith Mizrachy
What happens when high art meets trash? Mierle Laderman Ukeles has been revolutionizing contemporary art since the 1960s, becoming the NYC Sanitation Department’s first artist-in-residence and spearheading Ecofeminist and Social Practice Art. Maintenance Artist chronicles the evolution of this Orthodox rabbi’s daughter and how her deeply humanistic interpretation of Judaism inspires her largely secular work.

My Underground Mother
Director and Producer Marisa Fox, Producers Deborah Shaffer and Kelly Sheehan
Freedom fighter. Femme fatale. Double agent. Filmmaker Marisa Fox’s mother claimed she had been all three. Many years after her death, a page she wrote in a secret diary from a Nazi women’s camp reveals a fourth identity, leading Fox on a global investigation to reckon with the harsh truths she took to her grave.

Noga
Directors and Producers Jono Bergmann and Benji Bergmann
As she writes her first U.S. studio album, Israeli indie-pop sensation Noga Erez navigates not only the most personal and intimate challenges, but the complexities of being an Israeli artist trying to make it on the international stage during times of political upheaval and war.

Nurses
Director Israela Shaer Meoded, Producer Stav Morag Meron
Seventy years after her grandmother wept beside the empty bed of her missing daughter, Israela Shaer-Meoded sets out to uncover what happened to her missing Aunt Yedida, whose name means “friend.” Yedida was one of more than a thousand Mizrahi babies who vanished from Israeli hospitals in the 1950s. Through rare testimonies from nurses, caregivers, and doctors, Nurses reveals the emotional scars of those who never stopped looking for their missing children.

A Rhino’s Tale
Director Meital Zvieli, Producer Avigail Sperber
At the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, a Palestinian and an Israeli zookeeper must navigate the impending loss of a beloved, dying rhino named Shalom. In telling their story, the film wrestles with notions of captivity, personal and political relationships, and the wistful longing for peace in a region plunged into war.

The Survivor in a Tuxedo
Director and Producer David Fisher, Producers Michael Berenbaum and Naama Pyritz
The Survivor in a Tuxedo examines the multi-layered transformation of Elie Wiesel from Holocaust survivor to American moral icon, exploring the complexities and nuances that accompanied his rise to prominence.