Sam Spiegel Film and Television School

The school is situated at 3 Menorah Street, beside Bezalel Street in downtown Jerusalem, within the Jerusalem Arts Campus.[7][8] It shares the campus with three other arts institutions: the Center for Middle Eastern Classical Music, the Nissan Nativ Acting Studio, and the School of Visual Theatre.[9]

For most of its history the school operated out of premises in Jerusalem's Talpiot neighborhood.[10] In 2022 it relocated to a purpose-built seven-story building of approximately 4,000 square meters — more than double the roughly 1,500 square meters of the previous site — constructed by the Jerusalem Municipality as part of the arts campus development.[11] The new building includes three cinema halls open to the public for screenings and events, a 120-square-meter sound stage, 22 editing rooms, a digital library and streaming archive for student and alumni films, and a rooftop amphitheatre seating approximately 90 people.[11] Balconies overlook downtown Jerusalem and the Valley of the Cross.[9]

A 2025 Mako report offered a different opening chronology, stating that the building had been expected to open in November 2023 but was opened earlier following the events of October 7, 2023, to serve people evacuated during the war. During that period the school also operated a mobile cinema at hotels and other gathering places for evacuees, hosting screenings and meetings.[8] This account differs from the school's campus page, which states that the move occurred during 2022.[11][8]

The school was established in 1989 against the backdrop of a deep crisis in Israeli cinema. A student revolt in the film department at Beit Zvi in Ramat Gan had left the field in turmoil, and Israeli audiences had largely turned away from local films.[12][13] Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek, then-Jerusalem Foundation president Ruth Cheshin, and former president Yitzhak Navon played key roles in bringing the institution into being.[1][12] Schorr later recalled that Cheshin sent him a draft budget in July 1989 and asked him to open a new school in Jerusalem within a matter of months.[12]

Renen Schorr, a filmmaker, was the founding director and led the school for thirty years, from 1989 until November 2019.[1][14] The institution took the name of Hollywood producer Sam Spiegel in 1996. The Spiegel estate became a major continuing supporter, and annual royalties from Spiegel's films help finance the school's work.[2][3]

The school's first graduate films were presented publicly in 1992. The school describes those mostly autobiographical works — which addressed political, cultural, and personal conflicts — as marking a turning point in Israeli cinema by initiating a new dialogue with domestic and international audiences.[15] Over the following decades nearly 700 graduation films were produced during the school's first three decades, covering subjects including life in a conflict-driven region, immigration, LGBTQ legitimacy, Jerusalem, and the emerging power of female directors.[15]

In 2015, Schorr said the school had 608 graduates and estimated that 70 percent formed the professional backbone of Israeli cinema. He also said alumni made 25 percent of the films competing in the previous year's Ophir Awards competition.[12] Globes reported that year that the school had received a "best film school in the world" award sixteen times and a best school in Europe award once.[13] In a 2019 interview, former New York Film Festival director Richard Pena described the eras before and after the school's founding as "B.S.S. — Before Sam Spiegel" and "A.S.S. — After Sam Spiegel," saying its creation marked a period when the Israeli film industry "really blossomed."[5]

Dana Blankstein Cohen succeeded Schorr as executive director in November 2019.[1]

The school's English and Hebrew materials report approximately 170–180 students enrolled across two tracks.[1][3] Admissions are selective, and instruction is conducted in Hebrew.[16] Its English-language materials report more than 800 graduates, with approximately 75 percent employed in the entertainment industry.[1]

The main four-year program covers directing, cinematography, editing, scriptwriting, and production, combining theoretical and practical instruction from the first year onward. Short films are central to the curriculum, with students participating in school productions throughout their studies; third-year students may specialize in editing, cinematography, or production.[16] The school's educational philosophy, as articulated by Schorr, centered on storytelling rooted in distinctly Israeli experience as the path to universal resonance: "By telling the most Israeli stories, filmmakers touch a truth and can tell the most universal stories."[5]

The two-year screenwriting program, which began in 1999, combines writing classes and workshops with theory courses alongside directing students. Activities include work with actors, individual tutoring, and master classes with international guests. The program aims to develop students first as independent-minded storytellers before shaping their skills for film or television.[17]

A six-month preparatory program for Arabic-speaking residents of East Jerusalem opened in January 2022. Designed to guide participants toward the school's entrance exams, it aims to build a film community in East Jerusalem and increase access to film-school admission. Its first cohort had ten students; four passed the entrance exams and enrolled as full-time students.[1] The school produces close to 40 short films, dramas, and documentaries each year, most of which screen at festivals around the world, including Cannes, the Berlinale, Venice, and Toronto. The school also reports 220 tributes and retrospectives in 56 countries, including events at MoMA and the Berlinale.[1]

During the school's formative years in the early 1990s, faculty developed a distinctive method for teaching short-film screenwriting. Two visiting teachers played complementary roles: Dick Ross encouraged students to find and develop an original story, while Mons Røkov later pressed them on structure and the script's artistic logic.[12] The school's early guiding questions asked whether a story was original and relevant, whether the filmmaker was uniquely positioned or obligated to tell it, and how it might reach audiences across countries and cultures.[15]

By 2015, the school had 150 students and 95 teachers and mentors, with an emphasis on substantial individual guidance, repeated exercises, and collaborative production work intended to help students develop a personal voice and style.[12] The curriculum combines theory and practice throughout, with students participating in productions from their first year — an approach designed to ensure that technical and artistic development proceed together rather than sequentially.[16]

The Sam Spiegel International Film Lab launched in 2011 with support from the Sam Spiegel Estate.[9][18] Each year the lab selects 12 international writer-directors who are developing a first or second narrative feature film. Participants work for approximately seven to eight months with script-editor mentors, attending writing sessions and pitching to industry professionals. The lab's jury awards production prizes totaling $50,000–$70,000, donated by the Beracha Foundation, although the lab notes that the amounts may change.[18]

By the lab's tenth-anniversary celebration in 2023, it had developed 114 films by filmmakers from 45 countries. Of those, 45 had been produced and released, and three-quarters of the released films had screened at prominent festivals.[9] Among the lab's most celebrated projects is László Nemes's Son of Saul, which won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film in 2016.[9] Earlier, Schorr cited Nadav Lapid's The Kindergarten Teacher and Philippe Lacôte's Run as two incubator-developed films that screened at Cannes.[12] The program has generally divided its twelve participants equally between Israeli and international filmmakers.[9]

The Sam Spiegel Series Lab launched in December 2021, extending the school's development model to television. The lab is supported by Netflix and Paramount and was modeled on the International Film Lab.[1][19] Its stated aim is to create a bridge between Israeli creators and international audiences.[1]

The inaugural cohort selected eight projects from Israeli creators, spanning a range of genres and subjects, including a comedy set at Yad Vashem and a story centered on a millennial Israeli-Palestinian couple. The program provided mentoring by Israeli television writers and producers, and one project was eligible for a Netflix Series Development Award.[20] A 2022 announcement described the lab as open to creators whose first language was Arabic, Amharic, Russian, Yiddish, or Hebrew, and allowed projects originally written in any of those languages.[19] American producer and screenwriter Jill Condon provided artistic mentoring.[21]

The school's graduates have accumulated an extensive record of international festival recognition. Nadav Lapid's Synonyms won the Golden Bear — the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival — in 2019.[9] Talya Lavie's Zero Motivation won the top prize at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival.[5] Rama Burshtein's Fill the Void (2012), an internationally acclaimed family drama, earned lead actress Hadas Yaron a Best Actress award at the 2012 Venice Film Festival and won seven Ophir prizes.[5][6]

At the 61st Cannes Film Festival in 2008, Elad Keidan's short film Himnon (Anthem) won first prize in the Cinéfondation competition. It was the first Israeli film to win in that category since the competition's creation eleven years earlier; the €15,000 prize carried a guarantee that Keidan's next film would be shown in an official Cannes setting.[22] The school's 20th-anniversary DVD collection, released in 2011 and ranked by 20 festival directors and museum curators from around the world, placed Anthem first among the school's twenty most outstanding films.[23][23] Among the other films in that collection, First Aid (2010) had competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes.[23]

Filmmaker Tal Inbar graduated from the school and during her studies directed the short documentary The Home Front, about the Sarona terror attack. The film won several prizes, including first place for student documentaries at the Indian Cine Film Festival.[24] Writer Touché Gafla has taught writing at the school, and Ruth Diskin, one of its founding members, established its international film department and worked there for twelve years.[25][10]

In 2023, The Hollywood Reporter included the school among its 15 leading global film schools for the seventh consecutive year. The ranking cited the school's central Jerusalem campus, practical approach to filmmaking, preparatory program for Arabic speakers, and an estimate that approximately 75 percent of graduates work in the entertainment industry.[26] In 2025, the school made its eighth appearance on the magazine's list of leading institutions outside the United States.[4]

For the 2025 ranking, the selection panel described the school as continuing a program for Arabic-speaking students for a fourth year and characterized it as one of the few institutions in the region where Jewish, Muslim, and Christian students — including Israelis and Palestinians — study, live, and create together.[4] A 2025 Jerusalem Post report repeated this characterization and described the school as a space for Israeli and Palestinian students from different religious backgrounds.[27]

The school is a public nonprofit whose financial partners include the Ministry of Culture, the Jerusalem Municipality, the Sam Spiegel estate through the Jerusalem Foundation, and other donors.[2] The DocuText Festival, a student-documentary platform affiliated with the National Library of Israel, has listed the school among the partners presenting student documentaries produced over recent years.[28]

In 2019, a dispute arose between founding director Renen Schorr and a student named Hila Cohen during a committee discussion of her screenplay. Cohen released a recording of the exchange and alleged that Schorr's conduct was abusive; fourteen students later signed a letter protesting his behavior. In response, 150 alumni signed a letter supporting Schorr and describing him as demanding but not abusive. Schorr acknowledged shouting but disputed the criticism and characterized the episode as an internal school matter. He announced his retirement four days after the students' letter appeared, though the reporting did not establish the letter as the primary cause of his decision. Dana Blankstein Cohen was subsequently appointed as the school's executive director.[29][1]