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Joshua Seftel

Joshua Seftel

Emmy-Winning Film Director

Although filmmaker Joshua Seftel is best known for directing.

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Bio

Full Bio

Although filmmaker Joshua Seftel is best known for directing the Emmy award-winning television show, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and the feature film, War, Inc., starring John Cusack, Marisa Tomei and Ben Kingsley, his recent side project is attracting a new group of fans.

After his father passed away, Seftel wanted to find a better way to connect with his mother, Pat. With her living 1,150 miles away in Sarasota, Florida and his career keeping him constantly on the go, staying in touch was challenging. Then, he bought her an iPad for her birthday and everything changed.

After a few hilarious face-to-face lessons — filled with accidental hang-ups and pointing the camera at the ground — Seftel and his mother mastered FaceTiming – or “Facelifting” as his mom called it. He steered their conversations towards pop culture and loved her hilarious and candid opinions about Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and twerking. She said the things that everyone was thinking, and as a sweet Jewish grandmother, she could get away with it. Ever the filmmaker, Seftel started recording these conversations, and soon the web series, My Mom on Movies, hit the Internet.

Today, My Mom on Movies has received international attention and proven to be the most personal and meaningful for Seftel. The duo now regularly appears on CBS Sunday Morning, with a cumulative audience of 25 million viewers. With his touching and humorous speeches, Seftel illustrates how FaceTiming can bridge the gap between miles and generations for families looking to stay connected.

As a filmmaker, Seftel received his first Emmy nomination at age 22 with the award-winning documentary film, Lost and Found, about the plight of Romania’s 120,000 orphaned and abandoned children. The PBS broadcast of Lost and Found spurred thousands of American adoptions of Romanian orphans and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the cause.

His documentary, Taking on The Kennedys, aired on PBS’ P.O.V. series and was chosen by Time Magazine as “one of the ten best television programs of the year.” Seftel has also been a contributor to the Peabody award-winning radio show, This American Life, and his essays have appeared on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR.

Whether it’s through his award-winning films, television specials, or digital media, Joshua Seftel is constantly finding ways to create content with a conscience. Seftel and his mother’s funny and heartwarming speeches — about how a mother-son bond grew stronger in the wake of loss, and how technology and humor can be used to bring people of all ages together — are proven crowd pleasers on the speakers’ circuit.

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Topics

Topics

How I Reconnected with My Mother & Made Her a YouTube Star

How to Call Your Parents in the 21st Century

How to Avoid Getting Pigeonholed in Hollywood

Videos

Videos

Josh Seftel: A mother, a son, and an iPad
Filmmaker Josh Seftel, and his mom, talk Oscars

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