Joshua Seftel

Joshua Seftel is an American film director. Seftel began his career in documentaries at age 22 with his Emmy-nominated film, Lost and Found, about Romania's orphaned children. He followed this with several films including Stranger at the Gate, an Oscar-nominated short documentary executively produced by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai. His political campaign film Taking on the Kennedys was selected by Time Magazine as one of the “ten best of the year." Seftel also directed the underdog sports film The Home Team which premiered at SXSW, and a film about the Broadway revival of the musical Annie, It's the Hard Knock Life. In 2026, Seftel’s film, All the Empty Rooms, won the 2025 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film.