Renen Schorr-Heller, the filmmaker who founded the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film School (JSFS), has died at 72, a representative of the school announced on Wednesday.
Schorr-Heller, who ran JSFS for 30 years following its founding in 1989, was a legend in the Israeli film world and raised the school to a level of excellence that was recognized around the world and had a huge impact on Israeli cinema.
Movies by Sam Spiegel students won hundreds of prizes over the years, and dozens of its graduates went on to become leading figures in the Israeli film industry. The school’s alumni include such award-winning filmmakers as Nadav Lapid, Rama Burshtein, Talya Lavie, and Nir Bergman.
Under Schorr-Heller’s stewardship, the school was the subject of more than 190 tributes and retrospectives at film festivals and cultural institutions in 55 countries, including one at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1996.
Schorr-Heller also established the Sam Spiegel International Film Lab in 2011 to foster the careers of upcoming directors from around the world. Among the dozens of movies made by graduates of the lab was Son of Saul by László Nemes, which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2016.
Acclaimed director
An acclaimed director, Schorr-Heller’s movies included Late Summer Blues (1987), about high-school students in the summer of 1970, and The Loners (2009), about two Russian soldiers arrested for arms smuggling.
After retiring as director of the school, he made the film Wake Up, Grandson – Letters to My Rebellious Rabbi, a very personal documentary about his grandfather, Rabbi Avraham Heller, a war hero and Torah scholar, which was released in 2024. Late in life, he added Heller to his name to honor his grandfather.
Dana Blankstein Cohen, CEO of JSFS, said, “The Sam Spiegel community is heartbroken by the news of the death of our teacher Renen Schorr, the founder of the school, who established it as his life’s work in Jerusalem, an accomplishment that changed Israeli cinema and Israeli culture beyond recognition.
“Renen led Sam Spiegel for more than a generation, which he did with unparalleled passion and turned this institution into one of the most significant and leading [institutions] in the global film industry. Our hearts go out to his family and to all the multitudes of people who were so moved by this figure’s significant contribution to their journey of growth as creators and human beings.”
Asaf Wittman, chairman of the Board of Directors of JSFS, said, “Renen Schorr was larger than life. A tireless and uncompromising entrepreneur and creator who educated generations of filmmakers and raised Israeli culture and cinema to heights of quality and originality.”
Recently, Schorr-Heller was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Culture Ministry in recognition of his life’s work.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post upon his retirement from JSFS in 2019, Schorr-Heller said, “I knew I was opening a school for storytellers… By telling the most Israeli stories, filmmakers touch a truth and can tell the most universal stories.”
