HIGHLY RECOMMENDED ★★★1/2 - Video Librarian | "Outstanding" - School Library Journal | Voted “One of Ten Best Videos for Young Adults in 2003” by the American Library Association | HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - Educational Media Reviews Online
Religion + Spirituality • Youth Development • Diversity • American SocietyDate of Completion: 2003 | Run Time: 49 minutes | Language: English | Captions: No | Director: Sarah Feinbloom | Associate Producer: Klara Grunning Harris
In this award-winning documentary featured on PBS, a religiously diverse group of teens reveal their inner struggles and personal beliefs about faith, morality, suffering, death, prayer, the purpose of life and the divine. Without a hint of dogma they candidly discuss everything from hormones to heaven, deflating misperceptions and stereotypes and making a strong case for a more tolerant America. WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE? features Buddhist, Catholic, Muslim, Native American, Jewish, Pagan as well as Christian teens. Accompanied by an in-depth 28-page activities guide, WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE? is an excellent resource for comparative religion courses and exploring and promoting diversity in high schools and youth programs.
Video Librarian
"This insightful documentary is highly recommended."
School Library Journal
"An outstanding documentary...A magnificent undertaking...the dialogue is from the heart.”
Educational Media Reviews Online | Charles J. Greenberg, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, Yale University
"For all of the profiled teenagers, the influence of parental religious practice is overt, and parental approval and encouragement has provided the initial learning environment. At the same time, some of the teens have begun to question their religious identity and are uneasy in knowing how this might disappointment parents or close religious friends.
The well-edited audio and video production relies entirely on the ability to capture spontaneous words and actions of the teenage subjects. Introductory factual passages precede some interview segments. While the absence of narration would not help viewers with visual disabilities, the subjects’ own words clearly capture their perspective on faith, and I could easily imagine hearing the soundtrack as a radio feature.
Regardless of how strong the formal practice of religion remains at the end of each individual teen’s story, we are consistently confronted with articulate, optimistic, and inquisitive youth that are happy and self-confident, if not entirely sure how to integrate the tenets of their faith with the first romantic impulses they feel. Not a stereotype or trend seeker in sight. Highly recommended for secondary and public library collections."
The Interfaith Observer
"Sarah Feinbloom’s award-winning What Do You Believe? is a one-hour interfaith video that gives voice to a new interracial, interethnic, interreligious generation. Twenty teenagers talk about God, faith, prayer, death, and their own religious experiences. Five of them, coming from American Indian, Buddhist, Catholic-Jewish, Muslim, and Wiccan backgrounds, share their lives and spiritual formation in detail.
Adult voices never intrude. Coming from all manner of religious backgrounds, the young people speak openly, from the heart. Though produced nine years ago, the film is as alive and vibrant in 2012 as when it first came out.
Sarah Feinbloom fell into filmmaking almost accidently when her fellow teachers in Boston’s Roxbury district watched her film her students and encouraged her to become a director. What Do You Believe? comes with a curriculum you can download at the film’s website. (You can also see a two-minute trailer.) Compelling and highly recommended for young adults and for their elders, who may have underestimated the spiritual curiosity and wisdom of teenagers."
Official Selection | 2004 North American Interfaith Network Film Festival
Official Selection | 2004 Artivist Film Festival
Official Selection | 2003 Cinemagic Film Festival Belfast, Ireland
Official Selection | 2003 Religion Today Film Festival, Trento, Italy
Official Selection | 2003 Calgary International Film Festival
Official Selection | 2003 Toronto International Children's Film Festival
Official Selection | 2002 25th Annual Mill Valley Film Festival
Official Selection | 2002 Provincetown Film Festival
SCREENINGS
The Association for the Sociology of Religion 66th Annual Conference
2004 American Academy of Religion Annual Conference: Program Highlight
2006 Council for Spiritual and Ethical Education: Ethics Summit Conference
2003 National Association of Multicultural Educators Conference
Founder and Former Executive Director of GOOD DOCS
Director of WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE?, WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE NOW?, YOUTH TO YOUTH, EARTH WATER WOMAN, MANY LOVES, ONE HEART, and IN SEARCH OF THE HEART OF CHOCOLATE
Sarah Feinbloom is the founder and the former executive director of GOOD DOCS – a leading educational documentary distribution company specializing in human rights and social issue documentaries. She is also an award-winning director, producer and editor whose film work includes documentaries, dramatic narratives and advocacy films.
As the head of GOOD DOCS from 2013 - 2024, Sarah grew the catalog to almost 400 titles, before selling her company to Sage Publications in 2024. Under her leadership GOOD DOCS became one of the top educational film distributors in the U.S. and GOOD DOCS films are now in the permanent collections of over 1500 top university libraries, as well as established curricula and training resources for thousands of high schools and nonprofits. The award-winning collection she curated engages and inspires audiences by featuring rarely heard stories about individuals and communities working towards a more equitable world, and champions creative expression and critical thinking.
While growing GOOD DOCS, Sarah launched her signature GOOD TALKS program - a highly regarded speaker series bringing filmmakers, activists and their films to hundreds of schools, community groups and corporate audiences. During her tenure she produced over 500 speaking engagements, and this program continues to grow and thrive. Continuously adapting to the needs of her filmmakers and the educational institutions she served, Sarah also pioneered a unique approach to successful documentary film impact campaigns. Some highlights include a campaign for the Sundance film INVENTING TOMORROW on teen scientists saving the environment, for which she facilitated free impact screenings to over 5,000 high schools who could not have otherwise afforded this valuable resource. Sarah organized 1,500 free impact screenings around the country for the film PERSONAL STATEMENT and it’s #WeBelongInCollege impact curriculum funded by the Bill Gates Foundation to support college access for low income students. Also of note, Sarah created a campaign for Claims Conference to bring their film, RECKONINGS, on the Holocaust and reparations, to 800 higher education institutions and high schools nationwide. To support all these accomplishments, Sarah guided her GOOD DOCS staff, created a successful internship program, in addition to leading daily operations and strategy decisions.
Alongside her work building and running GOOD DOCS, Sarah has a longtime career as a documentary filmmaker in her own right. In her film work, she developed and practiced a collaborative-filmmaking approach, partnering with individuals and communities to center their stories and experiences. As a teacher in Boston in 1991, she put cameras into the hands of her students to co-create YOUTH TO YOUTH - A Video About Violence, becoming one of the very early independent filmmakers who fostered and promoted youth-led storytelling. In 2005 Sarah directed and produced DAUGHTERS AND SONS - Preventing Child Trafficking In The Golden Triangle which raised over $200,000 for Friends of Thai Daughters , a Thai American NGO working to protect Thai, Hmong, Karen and Vietnamese children. Some of her other credits include EARTH, WATER, WOMAN (2013) about a Rastafarian Trinidadian woman and her community combating climate change in the Caribbean, and MANY LOVES, ONE HEART (2017) championing LGBT activists and their straight allies in Jamaica.
Her latest project WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE NOW? (2019) follows up with the spiritual and religious lives of a diverse group of young people whom she first profiled in her celebrated 2002 documentary, WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE?. Both films premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival. WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE? aired on PBS in 2003 and screened internationally at venues including the National Association of Multicultural Education and the American Academy of Religion. It was voted “One of the Ten Best Videos for Young Adults in 2003” by the American Library Association and has been shown at over 2,000 schools and colleges. In conjunction with these two companion films, Sarah created and led participant-centered workshops on interfaith dialogue and religious diversity and was a featured speaker at the Ford Foundation Difficult Dialogue Series, the Graduate Theological Union's conference Religious Pluralism in the 21st Century, and the Religions For Peace-USA Symposium: Beyond Bigotry.
Sarah holds a B.A. in Political Science from Barnard College, Columbia University and an M.A. in Education from Tufts University. In addition to teaching high school social studies and history, adult ESL and youth filmmaking workshops, she was a working journalist in Israel in the 1990s. She recently served as a jury member for Jewish Story Partners 2024 granting cycle, and is a former member of New Day Films.