MISSION & HISTORY

The Tampa Bay Jewish Film Festival’s (TBJFF) mission is to use film for its contemporary and popular value to celebrate Jewish culture and to reflect the diversity and richness of the Jewish experience. The TBJFF seeks to use the power of film to both entertain and educate as well as to challenge conventional perspectives on complex issues facing the Jewish people and global community alike.

The Tampa Bay Jewish Film Festival is produced by the Tampa Jewish Community Center, and the Suncoast Jewish Community Center. The festival explores the diversity of Jewish life and culture and promotes discussion of relevant issues and concerns within and beyond the Jewish community.

The Tampa Bay Jewish Film Festival is a celebration of the finest newly released international films that focus on Jewish themes and is one of the most inclusive and pluralistic Jewish events in the greater Tampa Bay area. The festival delivers an extraordinary collection of gripping dramas, thought-provoking documentaries, eclectic shorts and offbeat comedies depicting Jewish life from different times and places and appealing to everyone from the most discerning film critics to family audiences. Selected screenings are enhanced by providing a dynamic forum for audience dialogue with visiting actors, producers, writers and other expert panelists.

Founded in 1995, the festival has quickly grown in size and reputation, welcoming moviegoers from across the greater Tampa Bay area. The outstanding films are shown in venues in Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater and the University of South Florida and attract moviegoers from every social and economic background from Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties and beyond. As attendance increases from year to year, the festival attracts not only a larger audience but also a more diverse one, reaching an increasingly multi-cultural and multi-generational (and especially younger) demographic.

The concept of Tikkun Olam – repairing the world through social action – is an essential Jewish obligation. Annually the festival showcases films that provide Holocaust and tolerance education in order to address important issues such as the rise in global anti-Semitism and extremism and the quest for unity and respect among Jews and between Jews and people of all other faiths. The Tampa Bay Jewish Film Festival is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Tampa Jewish Community Center & Federation and the Jewish Federation of Pinellas/Pasco Counties and relies on additional funding through grants and sponsorships from government agencies, private foundations, individuals and corporations, as well as from advanced and same-day ticket sales.