Joshua Seftel
| Joshua Seftel | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
July 17, 1968 Schenectady, New York, US |
| Occupation | Director, producer, screenwriter |
| Years active | 1992–present |
Joshua Seftel (born July 17, 1968) is an American filmmaker. Born in Schenectady, New York, Seftel graduated from Tufts University in the class of 1990 as a pre-med and French literature major. He currently lives in New York City and is represented by Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles. Seftel directed the feature film comedy War, Inc. (2008), a political satire about an American assassin sent on a mission to a war zone in Central Asia, starring John Cusack, Hilary Duff, Marisa Tomei, Joan Cusack, and Ben Kingsley. He also directed the award-winning documentary about American campaign politics, Taking on the Kennedys.
Seftel began his career in documentaries. At age 22, he received a National Emmy Nomination for his first film, Lost and Found: the Story of Romania’s Forgotten Children, a documentary about the plight of Romania’s 120,000 orphaned and abandoned children. Seftel lived in orphanages for several weeks while shooting the film. The Public Television broadcast of the film, which Seftel made for only $2,000, led to hundreds of adoptions of Romanian orphans and helped raise money and awareness for the cause.
Old Warrior, (1994) Seftel’s next film, is a documentary about the forgotten history of the Senior Citizens Power Movement and its founder, Frank J. Manning and received the Gold Plaque at the Chicago International Film Festival and was broadcast on Public TV.
In 1996, Seftel produced Taking on the Kennedys for the PBS series P.O.V. which followed the campaign of Republican candidate Kevin Vigilante as he challenged Patrick J. Kennedy for a U.S. Congressional seat in Rhode Island. Taking on the Kennedys was named on TIME's list "The Best Television of 1996" and has been anthologized in P.O.V.’s 20th Anniversary Collection DVD set.
Seftel's next film was Ennis’ Gift, an HBO documentary about learning differences produced with Bill Cosby and wife Camille Hanks in memory of their late son Ennis, which featured Danny Glover, James Earl Jones, Anne Bancroft, Robert Rauschenberg, Charles Schwab and Caitlyn Jenner (then Bruce). It has been called "inspirational" by The Boston Globe and received the 2002 Literacy in Media Award from the Literacy Network of Greater Los Angeles.
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