Joshua Seftel is an Oscar®-nominated and Emmy-winning director driven by the conviction that storytelling can promote empathy, connection and change. That thread can be seen throughout his work going back over 35 years.
His latest documentary, All The Empty Rooms (Netflix, December 2025), executive produced by Adam McKay and Steve Kerr, follows veteran CBS correspondent Steve Hartman on a secret project photographing the bedrooms left behind by children killed in school shootings. The result is a deeply emotional film that brings to life who these kids were and reframes gun violence from a political issue to a human issue.
Seftel received an Academy Award-nomination for Stranger at the Gate (The New Yorker, 2022), executive produced by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai, which tells the story of an US Marine who planned to blow up an Indiana mosque, and how the kindness of the Muslim worshipers transformed the direction of his life.
Over the years Seftel has been drawn to stories about ways we can better connect, understand, and ultimately help one another. In 1990 he made his first film, Lost and Found (PBS), which told the story of Romania's abandoned children. The film led to thousands of American adoptions of Romanian children and was nominated for a National Emmy Award. Since then, his documentary work has ranged from the political (Taking on the Kennedys, POV), to the intimate (his IDA Award-winning The Many Sad Fates of Mr. Toledano, NYT Op-Docs), to the empowering (his Peabody Award-nominated series Secret Life of Muslims), to the joyful (his Emmy-winning original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy), to the satirical (War, Inc. starring John Cusack, Marisa Tomei and Ben Kingsley). Seftel is also a contributor to the Peabody Award-winning podcast This American Life and to The New York Times.
For the past decade, Seftel has also produced a series of segments for CBS Sunday Morning featuring his 88-year-old mother, Pat. Their witty banter covers everything from Tinder to AI to trying cannabis for the first time, turning Pat into a celebrity. She regularly gets stopped by strangers on the street for selfies. The New York Times remarked, “the word ‘droll’ seems as if it were invented for these two.”
Seftel lives in Brooklyn with his wife, filmmaker Erika Frankel, and their two young daughters.
SELECTED AWARDS AND HONORS
Academy Award®, Best Short Documentary Nominee, 2023
Tribeca Film Festival, Special Jury Mention, 2022
Critics Choice Documentary Award, Nominee, 2022
Indy Shorts, Grand Jury Prize, Winner, 2022
Emmy Award, Winner, 2022, 2005, 2004
Emmy Award, Nominee, 2021, 2017, 2010, 2009, 2005, 1993
Official Selection Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, 2020
MPAC Media Awards, Honoree (with Sir Bob Geldof and Lena Khan), 2018
P.T. Barnum Awards, Honoree, Tufts University, 2018
International Documentary Association, Winner (with The New York Times Op-Docs), 2017
American International Broadcast Award, Winner, 2017
Fearless Ally Award, Nominee, El-Hibri Foundation, 2017
Peabody Awards, Finalist, 2016
South by Southwest Film Festival, Grand Jury Award Nominee, 2016, 2014
Goldziher Prize for Excellent Journalism covering American Muslims, 2016
Full Frame, Best Short Documentary Nominee, 2016
Tribeca Film Festival, Jury Award Nominee, 2015, 2008
Sheffield Doc/Fest: Best Short Documentary Nominee, 2015
Kavli Science Journalism Award, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2014, 2011
James Beard Awards, Nominee, 2012
Daytime Emmy Nomination, Outstanding Children's Series, 2011, 2010, 2009
Environmental Media Awards, Winner, 2004
GLAAD Media Awards Winner, 2004
National Arts Journalism Program Fellow, Columbia University, 2002-2003
The Best of 1996, Time Magazine, 1996
