Focusing on Jewish and Israeli issues, the festival has shown hundreds of films ranging both in genre and theme and held in the Aaron & Cecile Goldman Theater in the Washington DC Jewish Community Center and other cinemas in Washington and suburban Maryland and Virginia.
The festival was founded by Aviva Kempner in 1989 and has successfully run for over twenty years and is presented by the Washington DCJCC's Morris Cafritz Center for the Arts.
The Festival provides a forum for films with Jewish themes that most often do not otherwise find a place for public exhibition in the Washington, D.C. area.
[1] As of 2018 the WJFF is led by individuals following below: WJFF Year-Round is the year-round exhibition arm of the Washington Jewish Film Festival, presenting entertaining and thought-provoking features, documentaries, and shorts from around the world on a (approximately) weekly basis at the Aaron & Cecile Goldman Theater at the Edlavitch DCJCC.
[1] Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel, a 2018 documentary film about the underdog Israel national baseball team competing for the first time in the World Baseball Classic, won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the 2018 Washington Jewish Film Festival.