News & Updates: Meir Fenigstein: One Man’s Show
How Meir Fenigstein Brings Israeli Stories to the American Screen
February 11, 2026
Israel Film Festival director Meir Fenigstein speaks at the opening night gala for the 36th Israel Film Festival at Saban Theatre on November 13, 2024 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)
At 75, Meir Fenigstein, the founder and longtime executive director of the Israeli Film Festival, is still orchestrating a cultural feat that would exhaust people half his age. Every year, despite the shrinking number of movie-goers and the lure of streaming at home, he single-handedly brings Israeli cinema to American audiences — curating, fundraising, promoting and presenting films.
Fenigstein has spent decades building a bridge between Israeli filmmakers and American audiences. It’s a role he has played since 1981, when, as a music student at Berklee College of Music in Boston, he made a decision that would change his life. In his second year of music studies, Fenigstein walked away from academia to launch what would become the Israeli Film Festival, long before Israeli cinema was fashionable abroad. This year, he marked the festival’s 37th edition — a one-man operation powered by passion.
Running a film festival is never simple — doing it from thousands of miles away is even harder. Fenigstein oversees the festival from his office in Tel Aviv, but distance never loosened his grip on the project he built. Three to four times a year, he flies to the U.S. to prepare for the next festival, court sponsors and repeatedly make the case for why the Israeli Film Festival still matters — for Israel’s cultural image and for keeping Israeli cinema visible on the American stage.
Photo by Orly Halevy
Each year, the pitch becomes more difficult as funding grows tighter and donors are courted by competing Jewish organizations — especially in the wake of Oct. 7, 2023.
Convincing sponsors to invest in a cultural program rather than immediate humanitarian or political needs remains a constant challenge. Still, Fenigstein — who started the festival when he was 31 — refused to let go. For him, the festival is not just a series of screenings but a mission to ensure Israeli stories, talent and culture reach audiences in the U.S. The festival’s core audience is largely Israelis and American Jews, a loyal base that has sustained the event while gradually bringing new viewers into the fold.
That sense of purpose is most visible when Fenigstein steps onto the stage at the Saban Theatre at the opening night gala. Each time, he chokes up. Sometimes, there are tears in his eyes. Facing the audience, he pauses, steadying himself, visibly moved by the people who showed up — again — to watch Israeli films on a big screen. The emotion is not performative; it takes him by surprise every year.
Sitting with The Journal, Fenigstein admitted that even though it’s getting harder each year, he has no plans of quitting. He simply loves what he does. “I see this as a mission for the State of Israel,” he said. “I’ve screened more than a thousand Israeli films. Without the festival, people wouldn’t really know Israeli cinema.”
I’ve known Fenigstein for many years and consider him a friend, which has given me a front-row seat to the intensity of his passion for the festival. When asked how the comic character Poogy (which was also his nickname) was born, he launches into an animated, highly detailed description that verges on the theatrical, mimicking voices and gestures along the way.
“It was 1970 and I was a young soldier with the Nahal troupe, performing at kibbutzim. One night we came to Kibbutz Mefalsim in the Negev, where a group of young Argentinians had just made Aliyah. They had their own little band, singing and playing in Spanish. Israel Hadar, one of the kibbutz founders, introduced the group” (he slips into a thick Argentinian accent): ‘Amigos, buenas noches! Here with us, la Trio de Mefalsim! And after, la Band of the Nahal!’ I couldn’t stop laughing. On the bus back with the guys, I kept imitating him all throughout my service and whenever I went on stage and performed.”
Before he had moved to the U.S., Fenigstein was the drummer in the pop rock band Kaveret, one of the most beloved and influential Israeli bands of the 1970s. The group represented Israel at Eurovision in 1974 and reunited four times after their initial breakup, the last reunion in 2013 — playing to sold-out theaters. Their songs remain part of the national soundtrack.
Fenigstein with his Kaveret bandmates in the 70s (Photo by Monty Abrahmson); The Kaveret band.
When the band broke-up 50 years ago and its members pursued solo careers, Fenigstein wasn’t sure what he wanted to do next. “In the years after Kaveret, I had acted in a few films, but honestly, I didn’t know what I wanted to do: actor? … musician? I felt lost, so I went to Boston to study music. I quickly learned it wasn’t simple to start from scratch at 30, learning piano and arrangements. It was a steep climb,” Fenigstein said.
In his second year in Boston, he had a chance encounter that would change the course of his life. A university professor asked if he could bring Israeli films to campus.
The professor had seen the Israeli cult film “Eskimo Lemon” — the second most commercially successful Israeli movie of all time. Could he find out how to get Israeli films to screen here? Fenigstein said he could try. He reached out to producer Menachem Golan (“Delta Force,” “Death Wish”), who agreed to provide a few films for $1,500.
“That was half a year’s tuition back then,” Fenigstein said. Golan replied, “Take it or leave it.”
Fenigstein left the office to figure out a solution. That’s when producer Shish Koler approached him. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I said I wanted two films to screen in Boston.”
“Are you going to do a festival?” Koler asked.
“What are you talking about? I just want two films,” Fenigstein replied.
“So you’re doing a festival?”
“No, just two films for the university!”
Then Koler said, “Listen, I’m at Cannes every year. If you want to take 18 films and run a festival, I know distribution and marketing — I can help.”
Even though Fenigstein had been the drummer of one of Israel’s most successful bands, he wasn’t wealthy. Kaveret members had opted for a fixed salary instead of the 50% of profits their manager offered, earning about $30 per show — roughly $205 today.
Still, he decided to take the gamble. With Koler’s guidance, he secured several films for the first festival, betting everything on a vision.
The first Israeli Film Festival kicked off with Avi Nesher’s “The Band” (1978), a musical comedy about an Israeli military ensemble. Fenigstein even had a part in the film as the band’s drummer. It was a hit. “After the screening, a Jewish doctor approached me and asked if I planned to advertise in the Boston Globe. I said I couldn’t afford it — I was just a student. He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. I want every Jew in Boston to come.’”
The festival was scheduled to run for four days, from Wednesday to Sunday. On Saturday, the ad was placed, and on Sunday, the final day, there were five screenings, all sold out. Over the course of one day, 3,000 people attended the festival.
“It was simply incredible,” Fenigstein said. “I made a lot of money that night. Three weeks later, I notified the school I was leaving, packed my belongings, got in my van and headed to New York, where I was planning to open the next film festival. I thought, if I can make it there, I can make it anywhere.”
In New York, Fenigstein found a small apartment on 28th Street between Second and Third Avenues and rented an office on the 19th floor of the Empire State Building. For the next nine months, he threw himself into the festival, investing everything he had. The opening night was scheduled for February, when temperatures were 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Opening day was freezing — everything iced over, there were no taxis, the streets completely blocked. I believe the subway trains weren’t running, because I remember walking in a tuxedo, from my apartment to the theater on 59th Street, about 30 blocks. I was convinced no one would show up — who would brave this cold? On 42nd Street, a semi-trailer blocked both lanes; it looked terrible.”
When he finally arrived at the Manhattan One theater, it was already packed, all 300 seats were full. A representative of Mayor Ed Koch was there to say a few words, lending the event an official stamp of recognition.
A reporter from WPIX-TV also arrived to cover the first Israeli Film Festival in the U.S. “It was the first and last time I appeared on Channel 11 news,” he laughed.
The second Israeli Film Festival was a success, and the following year Fenigstein founded IsraFest, a foundation to promote American productions in Israel and encourage co-productions. It was then at he met a fundraising expert who worked for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The man immediately offered him a crash course in fundraising.
“I make money for a living. Come to my office, I need to teach you how to do it,” he told him.
Fenigstein didn’t wait long. A week later, he arrived at the man’s office. The man sat behind a desk on a lofty chair atop a raised platform, with two lower seats for guests across from him. He was on the phone and gestured for Fenigstein to wait.
“He was talking for maybe half an hour; I looked around at the countless photos on the walls. One was with the Israeli prime minister, another with the U.S. president, and one with Gila Golan, Israel’s runner-up in the 1960 beauty pageant. She had written him a warm dedication. I remembered someone telling me I needed to reach out to her for help — she had moved to the U.S. and married a very wealthy Jewish millionaire who invented the electric blanket.”
Once the call ended, the meeting began — and quickly became Fenigstein’s first crash course in persuasion.
“He looked at me and said, ‘Listen, young man, never ask me for two things at once, only one, because then I get confused and don’t know how to help. Second, when you ask me for something, you must touch my heart. And third, you have to be sure I can deliver.’ While he said this, I thought fast about what to ask, it had to be the right thing. I smiled, leaned over his desk, and said, ‘I want to meet Gila Golan.”
His request hit the mark. The man immediately punched his chest and said, “You’ve touched my heart.”
Without another word, he picked up the phone and called Golan in Miami. The former beauty queen and actress was married three times, her second husband being Matthew Bernard Rosenhaus, a Jewish American industrialist in the pharmaceutical sector, a pro-Israel philanthropist and the largest shareholder of Columbia Studios.
At first, Golan didn’t sound enthusiastic on the phone. Her husband had passed away a couple of years ago, leaving her with millions of dollars and countless charity requests. “She said she only supported orphans, since she had been an orphan herself. She was born in Poland in 1940 to Jewish parents who were murdered by the Nazis,” Fenigstein said. “But the ADL guy didn’t give up. He told her, ‘He doesn’t want money, he just wants to talk to you. He has a very interesting idea, you should hear him out.’ She was finally convinced — or maybe she just wanted to end the call. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll come to New York in two weeks and meet him at my apartment.’”
Two weeks later Fenigstein went to meet Golan. He took the elevator up in the luxury apartment building and was greeted by a stunning woman in her early 40s, wearing an elegant leopard-print dress and a hat.
He told her about the Israeli Film Festival and his plan for a gala at the Waldorf Astoria with a formal dinner, selling tables at $2,500 each. Golan asked him to wait and returned with a check for $25,000 — equivalent to about $86,000 today.
“Honestly, I was terrified. I didn’t want to take the money. It meant I had to actually pull off this event, and I wasn’t sure I could,” said Fenigstein. “Besides, I had promised I wasn’t asking for money, and suddenly here I was taking this huge check. But she insisted, ‘If you don’t take it, there won’t be an event. Please take it.”
That’s how the first festival gala happened with a list of celebrities which included Paul Sorvino, Howard Cosell, Brooke Shields, Israeli director/actor Assi Dayan and, of course, Gila Golan.
Brooke Shields and Meir Fenigstein at the second Israeli Film Festival in NY; Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito with Fenigstein; Fenigstein with his wife and
After establishing the festival in New York, Fenigstein began expanding its reach across the United States. In 1986, he opened the festival in Los Angeles, transforming it into a bicoastal cultural event and planting the seeds for what would become its long-term home base. Nearly two decades later, in 2005, he pushed the concept even further, launching editions in Chicago and Miami as well. At one point, he was running four festivals back-to-back — an exhausting logistical marathon that required coordinating venues, guests, film shipments, sponsors and press in multiple cities almost simultaneously. For Fenigstein, however, the expansion wasn’t about scale for its own sake; it was about making Israeli cinema visible wherever there was an audience willing to discover it.
Throughout the years the festival went on to host some of Hollywood’s biggest names, including Danny DeVito, Michael Douglas, Sacha Baron Cohen, Natalie Portman, Sharon Stone and Helen Mirren. It was a different era — a time when celebrities weren’t hesitant to be publicly associated with Israel, before it became “unpopular” to show support out of fear of retaliation.
Over the years, the festival has become far more than a screening platform. Each edition brings filmmakers, actors and industry professionals from Israel to meet American audiences, often staying after screenings for lively Q&A sessions that turn the events into cultural conversations rather than simple movie nights. According to Fenigstein, the exposure has helped open doors for Israeli creators in the U.S. and expand their international networks, giving them an opportunity to create connections.
Fenigstein was born in Israel to Polish Holocaust survivors. “Very few people survived Majdanek — I don’t know how my father made it out,” he said. Unlike many survivors who struggled to speak about their experiences, his father, Shimon, shared stories from that darkest period of his life. “During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, he fired at the Germans with a machine gun from a high floor of a building. When he saw the tanks approaching, he ran downstairs, and just as he got out, the entire building collapsed. Another time, they caught him stealing a potato and put him naked in the middle of the night into a large water tank. He survived that too.”
Shimon lost his first wife and two daughters, ages five and 10, during the Holocaust. He later met Fenigstein’s mother, Mania, at an SS munitions factory. The couple married and made Aliyah in 1949. A year later, Meir was born.
Growing up with the weight of his parents’ experiences and the importance of remembering history, Fenigstein developed a deep sense that stories, of survival, courage, and resilience, must be told and shared. That conviction is evident every year at the festival.
To open the festival this year, Fenigstein chose “A Letter to David,” the film about brothers Ariel and David Cunio, who were held hostage by Hamas. The film moves him to tears every time he watches it. “When I see David speaking, I can’t believe he was in captivity for two years and two months. What did they do to him? What did he eat? It’s hard to believe what he had to endure,” he said.
Films like “A Letter to David” offer audiences a glimpse into experiences most people abroad rarely see — the realities Israelis have faced, often absent from local media or mainstream films. But the festival is about more than war or conflict; it showcases the full spectrum of Israeli life through dramas, comedies and documentaries, each providing a window into the people behind the headlines.
In many ways, Fenigstein’s life reads like a movie. A documentary is currently in the works that will follow his journey — from his years as a band member to building the festival, and even a surprising chapter from his personal life.
In 1997, Fenigstein received news from his brother in Israel that a letter addressed to him had arrived from a woman named Susan, informing him that he had a 19-year-old daughter by the name of Rachel. She had been conceived during a brief encounter while Fenigstein was touring the U.S. with his band.
“They got my address from my school in Boston. I was living in LA at the time, Susan called me with Rachel on the line and said: ‘Hi, this is Susan; I’m Rachel’s mom, and you are the dad!’ — it sounded like it was an accusation,” Fenigstein laughed.
He was 47 at the time, a lifelong bachelor with no children. He arranged to meet Rachel in New York and took a DNA test which confirmed what was already hard to miss — the resemblance was striking. Rachel strongly reminded him of his late mother. From that moment on, Fenigstein became an active presence in her life. He attended her graduation from Harvard and later from Yale, where she earned her medical doctorate.
At 50, Fenigstein married Jessica (“Jessi”), who was 22 and a half. The couple moved back to Israel in 2013 with their two sons and welcomed a third son after relocating. Today, their youngest is 10 and a half — the same age as Fenigstein’s grandson, Ezra, the son of his daughter Rachel, who has made him a grandfather of two. “In May we are going to fly to Boston to celebrate Noah’s, my oldest grandson, bar mitzvah,” Fenigstein said.
These days, the festival takes place solely in Los Angeles. Running it in multiple cities proved too exhausting — there is no other foreign film festival, especially from a country as small as Israel, that once held four editions across the U.S. There were a few occasions when the relentless founder had to postpone the festival, like during COVID, when it was only online, and after the war, when fewer films were being made in Israel.
Director Eran Riklis, whose “Reading Lolita in Tehran” had its U.S. premiere at this year’s festival, participated in the festival for the first time in 1991, with “Cup Final,” then two years later, with “Zohar.” Both films were huge successes.
“Meir was and remains the heart of the festival in every sense — faith, vision, and hard work have driven him from the very beginning,” said Riklis. “After all these years, his passion seems even stronger, perhaps because it has never gotten easier. At a time when Israeli cinema faces challenges on the international stage, this festival remains a vital ‘window to the Middle East,’ and I am confident it will continue to be so.”
Actor Mike Burstyn, a lifelong friend, has supported the festival for the past 44 years. He served as master of ceremonies for many of the festival galas, starting with the first one in New York, where he was performing on Broadway in “Barnum” at the time. Over the years, he has continued to lend a hand, often conducting Q&A sessions with filmmakers after their screenings.
“I’m happy to do it,” he said. “Meir needs help — it’s not easy to organize such a festival year after year. We’ve known each other for so many years, back in Israel. His parents used to bring him to see me and my parents perform at the Yiddish theater.”
During the interview, Fenigstein was constantly interrupted by phone calls, urgent issues and fires to put out. He’s perpetually tired, sleeps little and feels the pressure of filling theaters and securing new sponsors. It’s a nonstop battle. And yet, he shows no signs of slowing down.
Beyond running the festival, he dreams of making his own feature film, based on a script he wrote 40 years ago but never had the chance to produce — a story about Poogy’s Dream, a nod to his nickname from the Kaveret years. “I really want to do it,” he said. “This is my life’s project.”
Then, as he often does, he launches into a long, animated description of the plot, frame by frame, eyes lighting up with excitement, and there’s no stopping him.
Read here: https://jewishjournal.com/print-issue/387009/print-issue-one-mans-show-february-6-2026/
