46th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Announces Winners + Jewish Film Institute 2026 Grants

The 46th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival has announced its juried and audience awards, with the top prizes going to The Wedding Entertainer (or the Tale of Moishe Badhan) for Audience Award Narrative and Dust Bowls and Jewish Souls: Another Side of Woody Guthrie for Audience Award Documentary.

Jury awards, including Best First Feature, went to Simon Mendes’ The Darkest Light, and the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle Award went to Oxygen directed by Netalie Braun.

The Best First Feature jury commented on The Darkest Light win, saying, “We were extraordinarily moved and transformed by this documentary, which asks meaningful questions about the legacy of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and provides riveting, complex answers. Its judicious and eye-opening use of archival footage captures a significant strain of late-20th-century American Jewish life, while the wide range of interviews – with Carlebach’s family, acolytes, and victims – provides a complex reckoning with his legacy of sexual exploitation. How do we respond when our heroes fail us, and how do we move forward?”

On Netalie Braun’s Oxygen win, the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle said, “What is ultimately stronger: a mother’s love or the deeply ingrained belief that some principles are worth any sacrifice? That profound moral conflict lies at the heart of Natalie Braun’s remarkable Oxygen. Through Dana Ivgy’s extraordinary performance as Anat—a teacher and lapsed poet forced to confront an impossible choice—the film refuses easy answers or sentimental resolutions. Instead, it embodies the very best of cinema: challenging audiences to wrestle with questions of duty, love, conviction, and the devastating cost of the choices we make.”

Short film awards went to Elijah, directed by Sam Roebling, for Best Narrative Short, and the Best Documentary Short prize went to Scenes from the Divide, directed by Alison Klayman.

“This year’s award winners embody the curiosity, complexity, and artistic ambition that are at the heart of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival,” said Director of Programming Dominique Oneil and Festival Director Ash Cook. “As we present our inaugural First Feature Award, we are thrilled to celebrate a new generation of filmmakers whose debut works display outstanding vision and emotional depth. We’re especially thrilled that the juries have recognized two films that have been supported through JFI’s Artist Development programs, and we applaud all of this year’s award winners, which reflect the vitality of contemporary Jewish cinema.”

2026 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Award Winners

Audience Award: Narrative
The Wedding Entertainer (or the Tale of Moishe Badhan)
Gidi Dar, Israel / USA, West Coast Premiere
To get the funds to marry off his own child, a disgraced Hasidic wedding-comedian must fight to reclaim his former glory in Gidi Dar’s hilarious caper.

Audience Award: Documentary
Dust Bowls and Jewish Souls: Another Side of Woody Guthrie
Steven Pressman, USA, US Premiere
From the dust storms of Oklahoma to the lox and bagels of Coney Island, discover a whole new side of Woody Guthrie that will forever change your view of one of America’s most celebrated songwriters and cultural icons. Steven Pressman is a 2019 JFI Filmmaker in Residence.

Best First Feature Award
The Darkest Light
Simon Mendes, USA, World Premiere
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach was a spiritual and musical icon for 20th-century Jews. What will happen to his cherished legacy after posthumous sexual abuse allegations?

San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle Award
Oxygen
Netalie Braun, Israel
With the outbreak of a new war in Israel, a soldier is about to enter Lebanon. His mother refuses to wait for bad news and decides to take matters into her own hands. Oxygen received a 2024 JFI Completion Grant.

Best Narrative Short
Elijah
Sam Roebling, USA, West Coast Premiere
A group of young, sophisticated Jewish New Yorkers will have their ideals tested when an unexpected guest crashes their Passover Seder.

Best Documentary Short
Scenes from the Divide
Alison Klayman, USA
Exploring the perspectives of New Yorkers on both sides of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for mayor of New York, this film reveals a fierce battle among American Jews over identity, history, and responsibility.

Jewish Film Institute 2026 Grants

The Jewish Film Institute (JFI) has also revealed the seven independent film projects that have been awarded 2026 grants from a competitive pool of 130 films. The 2026 Grants provide a total of $95,000 to films from the United States, Israel, France, Canada, Palestine, and the United Kingdom.

“Great films aren’t discovered; they’re developed,” said JFI Executive Director Lexi Leban. “The strongest film cultures—JFI’s Artist Development and Exhibition programs among them—invest in artists at every stage of the journey, through the process of iterating the idea to the moment a film reaches its audience.”

Since 2020, JFI has awarded $575,000 to 44 projects from around the world.

2026 Grant Recipients

The Animated Mind of OIiver Sachs
United Kingdom, United States
Director: Dempsey Rice
Producers: Lori Cheatle, Dempsey Rice
A newly uncovered archive along with immersive animation traces Oliver Sacks’ early career — revealing how an isolated young Jewish neurologist, shadowed by loneliness, learned to truly see his patients, and in doing so, began to see himself. Winner of the Harvey Goldberg Memorial Award, which is provided to a project that meaningfully expands the public’s understanding of Jewish life.

The Day After
France, Israel, Palestine
Directors: Yuval Orr, Aziz Abu Sarah
Producers: Yuval Orr, Liel Maghen, Margaux Missika
Winner of the Envision Award, which is provided to a project that explores the complexities of shared society by combating prejudice and hate.
A group of Palestinians and Israelis travel to Northern Ireland to learn how bitter enemies made peace. But as their homeland descends into deeper violence, they struggle to make peace amongst themselves. Recently presented at the 46th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival in July 2026 as a work-in-progress screening.

The Monument
Israel, Palestine
Director: Naama Shohet
Producer: Lev Orlov
Israel and Palestine are in a constant state of war. Naama’s ex cheated on her at a monument for fallen IDF soldiers. Her parents are feuding. Every month, her body prepares for pregnancy. Gripped by a paralyzing fear for the fate of her future children, Naama returns to the same monument where the infidelity took place; there, her parents appear before her. When their conversation hits a dead end, she dares to imagine a new reality of communication and peace.

The Opera
Israel, Canada
Director, Producer: Ran Tal
Winner of the Albert & Judith Goldberg Award for Jewish Arts & Culture, which is provided to a project that explores the role of artistic expression in Jewish life.
Through two years of devastating war and intense protest, the diverse cast and crew of Tel Aviv’s Opera persists, their art and individual stories reflecting a society torn between hope and despair, creation and destruction.

Tal’s documentary 1341 Frames of Love and War received the 2021 Albert & Judith Goldberg Award and was the Centerpiece Documentary at the 42nd San Francisco Jewish Film Festival in 2022.

Our Home is Not of This World
United States
Director: Russ Finkelstein
Producer: Manuel Contreras
Winner of The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation Tikkun Olam Award recognizing films which emphasize the responsibility and capacity of individuals and collectives to embody change and justice in striving towards a better future.

Our Home Is Not Of This World follows the invisible work of a medical examiner’s office in Texas that identifies people who die crossing the border, revealing its profound personal, legal and spiritual significance. Dr. Corinne Stern has been doing this vital work for more than 20 years and is now looking to retire, but the county government can’t seem to find anyone willing to replace her.

Russ Finkelstein is developing the film as a 2026 JFI Filmmaker in Residence.

Postmortem
United States
Director: Marilyn Ness
Producer: Beth Levison
Recipient of a JFI Discretionary Grant
Postmortem, a hybrid documentary film and theater project, is a boundary-pushing crime drama about an abused girl who didn’t tell her childhood secret—and the woman she becomes, who does.

The Woman Who Didn’t Know How To Love|
Israel
Director: Rotem Dimand
Producer: Mor Tregger Delarya
Varda never forgave her mother, Yehudit, for failing to love her. When her daughter Rotem discovers Yehudit’s hidden archive, she drags Varda into an unexpectedly funny, painfully honest three-generation conversation—insisting on a reconciliation only cinema can make possible.

The grant finalists were:

Everything is Not OK (Director: Dev Benegal)

Father Figures (Director: Emma Miller)

It Can Always Get Worse (Director: Noa Ben Shalom)

Julia Vinograd: Between Spirit and Stone (Director: Ken Paul Rosenthal)

Red Sea (Mar Rojo) (Director: Kevin Eisenberg)

The Wedding Entertainer (or The Tale of Moishe Badhan) (Director: Gidi Dar)