About the Festival

The Joan and Murray Gefen Memorial Savannah Jewish Film Festival is truly an exhibition of international cinema that celebrates the wonderful diversity of Jewish history, culture and experience through the moving image.

The SJFF is presented by the Savannah Jewish Federation and Jewish Educational Alliance. Each year since 2003, the Festival brings films to Savannah that bring to life issues and create dialogues about issues the Jewish experience.

The Savannah Jewish Film Festival seeks to:

Promote the preservation of Jewish culture and a diversity of narratives. The Festival provides a forum for films with Jewish themes that most often do not otherwise find a place for public exhibition in the Savannah area.  Many of the films we screen only have a life on the Festival circuit and in specialty DVD-release. 

Encourage innovation and vitality within Jewish culture.  The Festival highlights films that place Jewish themes in new contexts or challenge long-held assumptions.  The SJFF is at the forefront of presenting films that provide a constructive critique of Jewish identity and reconsiders major cultural guideposts such as Zionism, the Holocaust and assimilation.

Expose the widest possible audience to a low-cost, low-barrier entry to the Jewish culture.  Because the Jewish Diaspora has interacted with numerous host cultures over the course of its long history, the Festival seeks out films that examine some aspect of the Jewish experience are quite often a prism through which to view multiple cultures.