Benita (2025) by Alan Berliner
Saturday, February 28, 2026, 4:30 pm
Benita by Alan Berliner
Presented in Jewish Film Institute’s WinterFest 2026
Alan Berliner In person
Presented in association with Jewish Film Institute
Admission: $20 General / $18 Cinematheque Members
Event tickets here
The Jewish Film Institute presents the 13th annual WinterFest, weekend celebration of new, timely works shaping the independent Jewish film landscape. Featuring bold films from established filmmakers, conversation starting documentaries, and impactful short films, this year’s slate invites audiences an opportunity to connect with each other and engage with stories that resonate today. WinterFest runs February 28 through March 1, 2026 at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco.
Benita Raphan’s oeuvre of avant garde cinema is idiosyncratic, authentic and visceral, even if not widely known. Her unfinished final film, born from a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, was a look into the minds of her preferred social companions—the canine. When Raphan tragically took her own life in 2021, it shocked even those in her closest circle. At the request of her family, her friend and mentor Alan Berliner (JFI Freedom of Expression Award, 2013) was asked to complete her final work.
That request became the starting point for Benita (2025), a biographical-documentary that is both tribute and collaboration, serving as a conduit for its subject’s inimitable mind. Interviews with Raphan’s loved ones and peers are wildly intercut with excerpts from her own journals and films. Berliner’s cinematic künstlerroman moves from the Jewish household Raphan grew up in, through her time in the New York punk scene and towards the COVID-19 pandemic. When these scattered fragments are pieced together, they feel like a mosaic in motion, propelled by Raphan’s boundless creative energy. (David Cohn)
Berliner honors a fascinating artist who, with grim irony, becomes better known than ever through his memorial tribute. (The New Yorker)
We often celebrate the lone artist, but we don’t often want to grapple with the price they pay to create. Benita does both, and does them beautifully. (Hammer to Nail)
Berliner captures a special quality of Raphan’s artistry, the way a spurt of creativity would pivot in directions that seem to come out of nowhere, and keep multiplying. […] This is the portrait of an artist who never stopped growing, which makes her passing all the sadder. Let’s hope this heartfelt doc brings a broader public to her films. (The Arts Fuse)
About the Jewish Film Institute: The Jewish Film Institute (JFI) is a nonprofit organization that champions bold films and filmmakers that expand and evolve the Jewish story for audiences everywhere. JFI does this through the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, year-round exhibitions, its Completion Grants and Filmmakers in Residence programs and its educational and archival programs. For more information on JFI, please visit www.jfi.org.