JEWISHPrimary
Jewish audiences
Jewish audiences in the United States and worldwide.
Partnership
For Producers
An original contemporary ensemble musical feature film.
The oldest melodies still belong to the youngest hands.
Seeking: a lead producer for the proof-of-concept short.
Why now
Not only about Jewish songs.
JEWISH is not only a film about Jewish songs. It is a secular humanist musical film about young people learning how to understand, respect, and accept one another across ethnic, racial, cultural, and personal differences.
In a divided world, JEWISH is a story about young people learning how not to hate.
Commercial hook
A golden songbook, translated for a global audience.
JEWISH revives the golden songbook of Jewish music by translating and adapting its great songs into English for a contemporary global audience.
Songs such as Hava Nagila, Tumbalalaika, Hatikvah, Oyfn Pripetchik, Mezinka, and Tango of Auschwitz are cultural treasures.
The film does not treat them as relics. It turns them into contemporary musical cinema.
Not preservation as museum culture. Revival as popular music.
First audience
Who the film is for, in three concentric rings.
Identity
Cultural connection
Viewers connected to Jewish memory, Israel, cultural continuity, and Jewish representation.
Expansion
Crossover viewers
Musical fans, young audiences, families, educators, New York audiences, and Broadway audiences.
Accessibility
No prior knowledge required.
The viewer does not need to know Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, or Jewish history before watching the film. The songs are translated and adapted into English. When non-English words appear, their meaning is clear from context.
Most of the student characters are not Jewish. The audience discovers Jewish songs, humor, memory, pain, and joy through the eyes of young people who are discovering them too.
The audience discovers the culture with the students, not before them.
Emotional engine
The class is the central character.
The central character of JEWISH is the class: 17-year-old students at the Midtown Arts School and Academy (MASA), an elite performing arts academy in Midtown Manhattan. They begin the year talented, ambitious, self-focused, skeptical, and emotionally unfinished.
Through the process of building the musical, confronting songs they did not understand, and learning the human stories behind them, they become more generous, more awake, more connected, and more ready for adulthood.
Most of that growth happens at OyPizza, a Jewish-Global cafe across from the school that is the ensemble's home base and the film's Central Perk. A daily open mic and spelling bee and a weekly OyPizza Has Talent turn rehearsal into public performance.
The surface question is whether they win. The deeper question is whether they become better human beings.
The world on screen
A school, a cafe, and a class that sings.
Three locations carry the whole film: an elite Manhattan arts school, the OyPizza cafe across Times Square, and the eleventh-grade class that turns an inherited songbook into modern arrangements.
Proof of reach
The songbook already travels.
Before JEWISH was a film, it was a living catalog. Across dozens of countries the Jewish Songs catalog has earned, as of June 2026, 7.7 million streams plus 4.5 million YouTube views, and a largely non-Jewish audience has fallen in love with deeply specific Jewish song.
JEWISH was created, written, and produced by Walter J. Kin (RIGLI), its sole creator and founder. At the origin of the work stood two founding voices: the poet and translator Olga Anikina, who gave the old melodies new Russian words, and the singer Elechka, who gave them her living voice.
Production strategy
Start with a ten-minute proof-of-concept short.
The proof-of-concept short
The immediate production goal is a ten-minute proof-of-concept short film, not the full feature. The short should prove the tone, world, young ensemble, the MASA school and the OyPizza cafe, Joseph Shapiro, emotional stakes, and cinematic musical language.
What the short proves
- Tone
- World
- Young ensemble
- MASA school setting
- The OyPizza cafe (home base)
- Joseph Shapiro
- Emotional stakes
- Cinematic musical language
First needed partner
A lead producer.
The first serious partner needed is a lead producer.
Not just a financier. Not just a director. Not just a cultural supporter.
JEWISH needs a producer who can help package the proof-of-concept short, identify the right director, shape the production plan, connect the project to young performers, music supervision, choreography, Jewish cultural partners, and eventually position the feature film for investors, festivals, streamers, and theatrical partners.
Available materials
A package exists.
- Feature film overview
- Treatment
- Song list
- Selected music demos
- Character materials
- Proof-of-concept short plan
- Development timeline
- Preliminary production roadmap
Private materials are available by request to qualified producers, production companies, cultural partners, and industry representatives.
Request
Request the producer package
For producer inquiries, development conversations, proof-of-concept short discussions, or access to private materials, use the Contact / Materials Request page.