Daniel J. Strehlau

In 2003, Daniel J. Strehlau established by his own author idea, the pioneering Jewish Film Festival in Eastern Europe - the first festival of its kind in this part of the world: Warsaw JFF, of which he was head until 2015. Since 2003 he selected movies for his Festival, which got "Camera of David Award" of his Festival and three months later got Oscar® (West Bank Story) and Oscar® Nominations (Beaufor, Katyn) in the same categories as well as he presented some movies made by filmmakers (Guy Davidi and Benh Zeitlin), whose other films were Oscar® nominated (Beasts Of Southern Wild, Five Broken Cameras). In 2007 he selected short "With A Little Patient" by Laszlo Nemes, which won first award of his Festival, in 2016 Laszlo Nemesz won Oscar® for his "Son Of Saul". In 2013 he selected IDA, which won the first award of his 2013 Festival and in 2015 won Oscar®. In 2012 he selected for his Warsaw Jewish Film Festival "Flood" Dir. by Guy Nattiv, which received Camera of David Awards for best directory, best actress Ronit Elkabetz and mention for the actor Yoav Rotman, in 2019 Guy Nattiv' SKIN received Oscar®.During his Festival he invited many distinguished filmmakers, one of them Irvin Kershner (Empire Strikes Back) - Jury Chairman of his 2004 Festival, became a great friend of him. Daniel screened movies by Paul Mazursky, who became another friend of him.Among WJFF' Honorary and Competition Camera of David recipients are: Steven Spielberg, Andrzej Wajda, Roman Polanski, Barbra Streisand, Agnieszka Holland, Woody Allen, Agnes Varda, Paul Mazursky, Janusz Kaminski, Tadeusz Konwicki, Gustaw Holoubek, Quentin Tarantino, Amos Gitai, Laios Koltai, John Daly, Martin Landau, Joel and Ethan Coen, Caroline Link, Lina and Slava Chaplin, Hany Abu-Assad, Daniel Burman, Shira Geffen, Jerzy Hoffman, Paul Schrader, Laszlo Nemesz, Pawel Pawlikowski, Yariv Horowitz, Claude Lanzman, Matej Minac, Nurith Cohen, Evgenia Dodina, Alex Claude, Samuel Maoz, Ted Taube, Radu Gabrea, Mike Nichols and hundreds of others.During his Festival he organized a lot of meetings and Q&A periods with Palestinians filmmakers (Ismail Khatib, Palestine; Fakhri Hamad; Palestine), whose movies were presented at Warsaw Jewish FF in the competition section of Palestinians movies.Daniel Strehlau established during his Festival a lot of peace meetings between Palestinian and Jewish Diasporas (Konstanty Gebert, Jamal Dajani) as well as between Israeli Jews (Prof. Shevach Weiss - Israeli Knesset and Alon Simhayoff - Second Secretary of the Embassy of the State of Israel in PL; Jair Dalal - musician, Israel ) and Palestinians from Palestine (His Excellency Mr. Khaled Naef Ghazal Soufan - Palestinian Ambassador in PL; Maget M. Sahly and Dr. Khalil Nazzal).The Festival is led by Magda Makarczuk - Strehlau, who is the head and the executive director of the Festival.