Jewish Story Partners celebrates 5-year anniversary and announces new slate of grantees
Jewish Story Partners reaches five-year milestone as leading independent film funder with $560,000 in new grants to 22 projects, bringing total giving to $4.5 million for 136 projects.
- Five JSP-supported films have been shortlisted for Academy Awards and many have won top film festival awards.
- New JSP grantees explore Leonard Bernstein, Marc Chagall, Ram Dass, Robert Frank, Judy Heumann, and Jessica Savitch.
Jewish Story Partners (JSP), a non-profit film funding organization, announced its new grantees today, with $560,000 distributed among 22 feature documentary films. Launched in 2021 with support from Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation, JSP works to stimulate and support the highest caliber independent films that expand the Jewish story. In just five years, JSP has awarded $4.5 million in grants to 136 projects making JSP one of the leading funders of independent documentary film.
“With our pressurized, intensive review process, the films that emerge as JSP grantees are diamonds. Just this year, three JSP films were shortlisted for an Academy Award. All of JSP’s diverse films are sent out into the world to preserve Jewish stories, bridge divides, and serve as engaging delivery systems for Jewish education and connection,” said JSP Executive Director Roberta Grossman.
The new slate of JSP grantees, chosen from over 240 applications, demonstrates the breadth of Jewish stories from projects that confront the devastating aftermath of October 7th (Family Pictures and When Elephants Fight) to those that creatively tell vital and little known stories of the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust (Berlin Chic, Daring Lives Dangerous Times, The Limits of Truth, and I Want To Tell My Story). New JSP grantees also explore important Jewish icons, artists, and activists (Anchorwoman, Chagall, Here Now: The Revolution of Ram Dass, Salut Robert, To Be Heumann, Young People's Concert Documentary Untitled). The slate includes powerful documentaries from acclaimed directors and producers including Anne Alvergue (The Martha Mitchell Effect), Julie Cohen (RBG, Julia), Tomer Heymann (Mr. Gaga, Paper Dolls), Mark Landsman (Scandalous: True Story of National Enquirer, Thunder Soul), Jim LeBrecht (Crip Camp), Susan Margolin (Monk in Pieces, Rape of Recy Taylor), Marilyn Ness (Charm City, Cameraperson), and Michèle Ohayon (Cowboy del Amor, Colors Straight Up). See below for a full list of the granted projects.
The jury for the Spring 2026 funding round was composed of author, cultural historian, curator, and MacArthur Fellow Josh Kun, Vice Provost for the Arts, USC; Academy-Award nominated filmmaker Tia Lessin (Steal This Story, Please!, The Janes, Trouble the Water); and Academy-Award nominated filmmaker Laura Nix (Democracy Under Siege, Inventing Tomorrow, The Yes Men Are Revolting).
“It was exhilarating to engage with this expansive array of artful, risk-taking films, which wrestle with the urgent issues of today while shedding new light on the past. We believe this remarkable slate offers a window into our common humanity, and will inspire robust debate among many audiences, just as it did for us.”
Sixty-four JSP-funded films are now complete and reaching audiences at festivals, in theaters, on television, and on streaming platforms. A monumental three JSP films were shortlisted for the Academy Award this year including Coexistence, My Ass!, Holding Liat, and My Undesirable Friends. Dan and Sam Habib’s The Ride Ahead was recognized with two Emmy Award nominations and won for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary. Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse was also nominated for a Peabody Award.
JSP currently accepts submissions via one open call per year, with applications opening in November and juried decisions made in May. The Fall 2026 Reprise Grant cycle is now open to current JSP grantees only, with an August 7th, 2026 deadline.
Jewish Story Partners has received funding from partners including Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation. JSP has reported funding of $10,000 or more from the following funders in the past year (in alphabetical order): Anonymous (5), Another Light Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Stephanie and Jon DeVaan, Gale Epstein, The Rosalinde & Arthur Gilbert Foundation, Jodi Harris, Adam Irving, Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, The George S. Kaufman Charitable Foundation, The Klarman Family Foundation, Koret Foundation, Lynn and Jules Kroll Fund for Jewish Documentary Films, Kronhill Pletka Foundation, Lismore Road, Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, Susan Bay Nimoy, The Posner Foundation of Pittsburgh, Project Accelerate, Mickey Shapiro Foundation, The Jay and Terry Snider Foundation, The Streisand Foundation, Marcy Syms, and the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund.
2026 New Grantees
Film descriptions provided by grantees.
Anchorwoman
At a time of dramatic flux in the women’s movement and broadcast news, Jessica Savitch’s meteoric rise to become one of the first national news anchorwomen in America, and her struggle to retain her status, becomes a heightened lens through which to understand gender, ethnicity, power, and media in 1970s and 1980s America.
Berlin Chic
The Holocaust and the world of fashion collide in Berlin Chic, which chronicles how Nazi “Aryanization” wiped out Berlin’s thriving Jewish fashion industry and reconstructs its stolen place in history and in global style today.
Calendars of Love
After 55 years of shared life, Dorit, a recently transitioned transgender woman and her wife Kumi, now fading into dementia, poignantly witness each other’s transformations and reflect on past journeys as they prepare for an unknown future.
Chagall
In the first feature documentary film in over 50 years about one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Chagall tells the story of a Jewish artist who responded to extreme poverty, persecution, displacement, and heartbreak with a relentless imagination and beauty.
Daring Lives Dangerous Times
Lesbian pioneer Eve Adams and her companion Hella Olstein met and fell in love as Jewish refugees in Paris in 1933, defying the sexual, immigrant, and antisemitic barriers of their times. Their disappearance during the Holocaust remained a mystery—until now, as their descendants on two continents attempt to uncover their lost story.
Family Pictures
When murder claims filmmaker Abraham “Abie” Troen’s sister, brother in law, and greatgrandmother a century apart, his family's past and present collide, forcing each generation to decide how to carry forward a legacy of dignity, peace, and justice.
Here Now: The Revolution of Ram Dass
An immersive cinematic journey into the mind, body, and soul of Dr. Richard Alpert, who undergoes a profound search for meaning that transforms him into Ram Dass, author of "Be Here Now," the best-selling "bible of the counter-culture" that introduced Eastern ideas of the soul, ego, and being in the present moment to the West, launching a spiritual revolution that endures to this day.
I Want To Tell My Story
Cutting-edge technology brings the past to life in this immersive cinematic journey into the memories of 99-year-old Holocaust survivor Shimon Rothschild, turning history into a deeply personal and emotional experience.
Jewish Women Escape Iran Untitled
Following the Iranian revolution in the 1970s, three Jewish women risk everything to escape persecution in Iran and rebuild their lives, revealing a deeply personal story of courage, identity, and survival.
The Limits of Truth
Newly unearthed home movies and private diaries by a Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist, reporting from Berlin, capture a never-before-seen chronicle of 1930s Germany’s chilling descent into dictatorship and antisemitism. His writings are eerily current.
Polyphony
In a land divided by religion, politics, and painful history, young Jewish and Arab music students dare to do the unthinkable: unite through the power of classical music at Polyphony, a conservatory in Nazareth. Relationships form and conflicts arise as they work towards a performance that will challenge them to play as one on a global stage: Carnegie Hall.
Salut Robert
Assembled from decades of unseen personal footage and home movies, Salut Robert is a diaristic portrait, a posthumous autobiography of revered photographer-filmmaker Robert Frank told in his own words and images.
The Silver Cord
Combining contemporary footage with home movies taken by the filmmaker’s Jewish ancestors who emigrated from Belarus to New York in the early 20th century, this auto-ethnographic documentary explores memory, history, and family, and what it means to examine everyday life through the medium of film.
To Be Heumann
From a childhood shaped by polio to the front lines of a revolution, Judy Heumann, “Mother of the Disability Rights Movement,” wielded raw courage and strategic brilliance to become one of the great civil rights leaders in American history.
When Elephants Fight
Filmed over two years across Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, and the United States, a Jewish American filmmaker sets out to make sense of a war that has followed her home.
Young People’s Concerts Documentary Untitled
Between 1958 and 1972, Leonard Bernstein brought his Young People's Concerts to network television, democratizing music education for millions of Americans. Young People’s Concerts Documentary Untitled weaves these original broadcasts with archive and interviews to trace Bernstein's journey through these years—and what he hoped to offer a nation in crisis.
Spring 2026 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.
Buildings Remember People
An unorthodox film about the pitfalls and necessity of re-presenting the Holocaust—mixing essay, humor, verité, and witness testimony—Buildings Remember People interweaves three narratives: an Arizona synagogue built by survivors, a German artist’s ongoing monument, and the 2024 election to interrogate fault lines of memory, fascism, and filmmaking itself.
Curse of the Mutant Heirloom
A daughter excavates decades of estrangement from her Holocaust-survivor mother, fueled by the discovery of an unwelcome bond—the BRCA cancer gene mutation. In a world of expendable female body parts, can an alien girl find a true connection to her robot mother?
Dust Bowls and Jewish Souls: Another Side of Woody Guthrie
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.
Our Home is Not of This World
In a rural south Texas medical examiner’s office, a Jewish physician works with a tiny team to identify the growing number of anonymous migrants who perish crossing the U.S.–Mexico border. With cases surging, her office is stretched beyond capacity. Will she be able to retire after decades of service if no one is willing to replace her?
Postmortem
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.
White Rose
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 family members, 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.