By Gary M. Kramer–
The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF), July 17–August 3, features more than a half dozen features, shorts, and documentaries about LGBTQ life, including 31 Candles, an amusing Bar Mitzvah comedy with a slight queer twist; Heightened Scrutiny, about trans advocate and activist Chase Strangio arguing the Supreme Court case, United States v. Skrmetti, about banning gender affirming care in Tennessee; and Monk in Pieces, a striking documentary about the celebrated queer interdisciplinary artist, Meredith Monk.
Other queer-themed features include Midas Man, an entertaining character study of Brian Epstein (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd), the gay man who is credited with discovering the Beatles; and Come Closer,an intense drama about Eden (Lia Elalouf), who becomes romantically involved with her dead brother’s secret girlfriend, Maya (Darya Rosenn).
Ash Hoyle, the Guest Festival Director, and Dominique Oneil, the festival’s Director of Programming, both of whom are queer, spoke with me for the San Francisco Bay Times about this year’s lineup.
Gary M. Kramer: What are your criteria for curating films for this festival? Is it the content, the Jewish focus, or something else? What is the goal with your programming?
Ash Hoyle: For us at SFJFF, [what] we’re looking to do with the program is expansion. For the length of our 45-year history, we’ve done a good job of providing a kaleidoscopic understanding of what is on the mind of the Jewish artist and Jewish culture at large. What that takes is a really broad, multifaceted, sometimes contradictory, and always really open approach to what we want to touch on editorially. That is our curatorial posture. It’s about absorbing the submission pool and getting a pulse on what is being discussed and on the minds of artists and then shaping a program that feels cogent and urgent and meets the moment.
Gary M. Kramer: What can you say about programming the queer films in this year’s festival? Some of the films at the Jewish Film Festival screened at Frameline last month. Are there concerns about overlap, or exclusivity and premieres? Or is your mission to give folks another opportunity to see these films?
Ash Hoyle: We share an office and a city with Frameline. It’s cool and exciting to have overlap because it shows the intersection of queer life and Jewish life in San Francisco.
Our audience is really different. With Heightened Scrutiny, queer folks and close allies saw that at Frameline and hopefully we will be expanding that to people who will learn something and have their minds changed. Sharing titles is great and not being precious about premiere status is a service to the larger film community. We have world premieres. There is a balance of fresh and new and we are looking in a less black and white way on how the presentation of other works can add to the conversation.
Dominique Oneil: We are excited about audiences coming out for films, so if we can give another opportunity for people to see the works of these artists who have something to say, we want to do that, especially for these films that mean something and are important for our time.
Ash Hoyle: A large majority of the films in our festival don’t have wide distribution, so there is no other way to see them. It is a good thing to give audiences more chances to catch them in San Francisco.
Gary M. Kramer: Heightened Scrutiny, which chronicles trans advocate and activist Chase Strangio arguing the December 2024 Supreme Court case, is part of the “Take Action” spotlight. Can you talk about the festival having political power?
Ash Hoyle: This film, as you mentioned, is in our “Take Action” spotlight, which we carve out in the festival to tap into larger zeitgeist conversations that fit under the umbrella of the Jewish principle of tikkun olam. With programing, there is a careful balance of looking at the landscape of what’s happening in the culture right now and trying to find films that plug us into what we know audiences want to talk about. The Supreme Court case [the film is about] was decided definitively since we announced our program. It is an obvious urgent political issue people care about within the Jewish, queer, and San Francisco communities. Sam [Feder the director] is a Jewish anti-Zionist filmmaker. This film, while not directly addressing Jewish issues, has that sensibility. It is also to encourage audiences to expand their ideas of what a Jewish film is. It is important cultural matter made by one of the most influential trans masculine and Jewish voices in the documentary world working today.
Gary M. Kramer: You are also featuring a conversation with Tommy Dorfman. What can folks expect from attending that program?
Ash Hoyle: It’s not a screening-focused event. We want to offer audiences a variety of experiences beyond just a screening. It’s a way to reach someone who is an important cultural voice in the trans space and the Jewish space, both in Tommy and her conversational partner, Laura Albert, a legendary literary icon, and also an interesting complicated Jewish voice as well. They will be reading from Tommy’s memoir and talk about her book. They straddle the literary and film worlds. It’s exciting to expand our festival event framework to plug those people in.
Gary M. Kramer: You feature a local short, Thanks, Babs!, a documentary portrait of a vibrant queer octogenarian. How much does a Bay Area connection weigh into your decision to program something?
Dominque Oneil: We are lucky being situated in the Bay Area. We have a very vibrant and large filmmaking community. Each year we have a number of local films to consider. Babs is this amazing effervescent character. She is having the gayest time. She is a total icon; a diva. We all need this energy. We are expecting her to join us and the directors, Rivkah Beth Medow and Jen Rainin, will also be there. Thanks, Babs! is a film that happens to be local, but really shines on its own.
Gary M. Kramer: One selection this year is The First Lady, a documentary about Efrat Tilma, the first transwoman in Israel. The film is a celebratory look back at her life, her struggles with persecution and transphobia, and trouble with the police as well as her accomplishments, such as becoming the first trans police officer. What excited you about this film?
Dominique Oneil: I appreciated Efrat’s story, which is about finding your place in the world through resilience and resistance. It captures her 70-odd-year journey of fighting for and securing rights for herself and others. Along the way she is evaluating and adapting to the discrimination she faces. It is specific to her life as a trans Israeli Jew. On top of that, she’s hilarious. The film is supported through the Jewish Film Institute though our residency program. The director developed the film in their residency last year.
Gary M. Kramer: You do feature a few fun queer films—Midas Man, about Brian Epstein, who discovered the Beatles, and 31 Candles, an adult Bar Mitzvah comedy. Can you talk about striking a balance in the programming?
Ash Hoyle: Hopefully people will encounter something they like, or are interested in, or are challenged by. What is exciting about gathering all these films and filmmakers together is offering a variety. That is what our audience wants. They are hungry to have their intention filled—have a laugh on a Friday night or are interested in a topic academically. People come to film festivals to have their world views expanded and their taste challenged. We want you to encounter things you don’t while scrolling
through streaming services at home. That’s why audiences come, to make choices beyond the obvious or first impulse. As programmers, it is our responsibility to feel that hunger.
Gary M. Kramer: What films do you encourage audiences to see?
Ash Hoyle: The Divine Sarah Bernhard. It happens to be queer. It is a period drama about Sarah Bernhard that is way funnier and way sexier than you’d expect on a historical figure.
Dominique Oneil: I would recommend Rule of Stone, which is not a queer film, but it is a film I really took away a lot from about how Jerusalem was built. It’s about architecture, which is not an easy sell, but it is about so much more—cultural appropriation in Jerusalem, and coexistence, and the erasure of two cultures. I’m more of a serious documentary person, which is where that is coming from. But I can also recommend a queer film, Monk in Pieces, which is a documentary about Meredith Monk. This is another JFI supported film.
Meredith Monk is so unique in her vocal stylings. It is something I had never heard before, and this film captures all of that and makes it make sense such that it really resonates. She is totally weird and super relatable. It was a really enlightening film—a music bio doc that didn’t feel like a music doc.
© 2025 Gary M. Kramer
Gary M. Kramer is the author of “Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews,” and the co-editor of “Directory of World Cinema: Argentina.” He teaches Short Attention Span Cinema at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute and is the moderator for Cinema Salon, a weekly film discussion group. Follow him on X @garymkramer
Film
Published on July 17, 2025
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