Documentary filmmaker Joshua Seftel, A90, has enlisted many Tufts alums in his mission to help us see—and feel for—people we might otherwise never know
“So many documentaries make people feel excluded or judged,” said filmmaker Joshua Seftel, A90. “I’m interested in the challenge of making space for viewers who I think might really disagree with me.” Photo: Courtesy of Smartypants
Right after graduating from Tufts, Avi Bond, A21, took a job as a strategy consultant at a financial services company. She knew it was the wrong fit on day two. Searching for something more creative, she made some 50 networking calls, eventually talking with fellow Tufts alum Joshua Seftel, A90, the accomplished documentary filmmaker. He took a chance, giving her a remote internship that she worked nights and weekends.
Little did she know that in just a handful of years she would be at the Academy Awards as All the Empty Rooms, a film that she helped co-produce, won the Oscar for best short documentary.
From the early days of his career, Seftel has employed other artistic minds, adding a desk to his living room with each new hire until he had to find an office. Today his film company, Smartypants, comprises 31 employees based all over the country, and the Tufts presence is strong. Eric Nichols, A11, and Anna Bick Rowe, A12, longtime employees, were executive producers on All the Empty Rooms. So was Jon Levin, A75, Seftel’s one-time manager and now an independent producer, who has been involved with more than 25 Oscar-winning films. Vikram Akula, A90, was a generous supporter of the documentary.
Meet the Filmmakers
Others who have passed through Smartypants include Michael Glassman, A01, now a producer at LD Entertainment; screenwriter Laura Willcox, A08; and Julie Rapaport, A06, now head of Amazon Movies at Amazon MGM Studios.
It makes sense that a company named Smartypants would attract such a group. “Tufts’ culture is definitely one that’s driven by curiosity and a wide breadth of thinking,” said Bond, recalling her many classmates who double majored and joined a host of clubs. “I think that plays to documentary, where we’re always dipping our toes into different topics.” Like becoming experts on the musical Annie one day (for It’s the Hard Knock Life) and deep-sea exploration the next (for Bruce and Alvin).
Seftel estimates the company has hosted more than 100 Tufts interns, either for week-long “winternships” organized by the Film and Media Studies Program or for longer stays. Kaycee Feldman, A23, who interned in 2022, did both. She said she was encouraged to book time on any employee’s calendar for a one-on-one talk.
“They would be honest about how difficult it was to be successful in this field, but they would take time to figure out how I could position myself to be successful,” said Feldman, who is now an assistant producer at Charles River Media.
That model of mentorship comes directly from Seftel, Rowe said: “Even when his schedule is insane, and we’re like, ‘You do not have time to do this,’ he’s passionate about making time to talk to young people, to help them with their careers.”
A Tufts Start
Seftel says he feels something of an obligation to Tufts for all the help he received when he was trying to get his filmmaking career off the ground. As a Tufts student, Seftel majored in French literature but also completed a premed track with the goal of becoming a Doctors Without Borders physician.
Then, in his senior year, he found out his advisor, Romance language Department Chair Seymour Simches, was retiring. With no filmmaking credentials except a love of movies, Seftel decided to make a documentary about the beloved teacher, which he screened in the library. It caught the eye of another faculty member, whose husband had started a nonprofit to help orphans in Romania. Would Seftel do a film about that?
The result, Lost and Found, ran on PBS in 1992, inspired thousands of U.S. adoptions of Romanian children, and made Seftel rethink medical school.
Much to his parents’ chagrin, he decided to give filmmaking a shot, to see if storytelling could be a different means to the same end of helping people. But the path was rough. Back then, you needed more than an iPhone to make films. Even renting a video camera was a financial strain.
Seftel saw right away that he would have to ask for help. “I don’t know where I got the guts, because I was a pretty shy person,” he said, “but I knew that if I was going to do this thing, I had to go for it.” Failing, which would prove his parents right, wasn’t an option.
So he sought advice from Sol Gittleman, Tufts’ provost at the time, who went to John DiBiaggio, then Tufts’ president.
“Not only did they buy me a video camera, but they gave me an office,” Seftel said. Granted, it was in the basement of the old Brown and Brew coffeehouse and had clearly been flooded at one point, but he was grateful.
The musty venue may or may not have influenced his 2003 film Breaking the Mold, a comic tale about toxic fungus, but the camera definitely enabled him to make 1996’s Taking on the Kennedys, about a political newcomer who runs for Congress against Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy’s youngest son, Patrick.
Spotlighting Characters
Seftel sought out mentors early on. One of his first was Boston-based documentary maker David Sutherland, A67, for whom he did work in the ’90s. Seftel would watch his films over and over, studying his methods.
Sutherland taught him that a story has to hang on its characters. Seftel carried that lesson with him when he was brought on to direct the original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which he approached with his now trademark mix of humor and compassion.
Joshua Seftel and his mother have appeared regularly on “CBS Sunday Morning” segments. Photo: Courtesy of Smartypants
While Queer Eye may be Seftel’s most well-known work, audiences are more likely to recognize his face from CBS Sunday Morning. For 12 years, he has produced segments for the show based on conversations with this mother, who is willing to give a thoughtful opinion on most anything, from CBD to Michael B. Jordan.
“I can’t think of many real people on the media landscape who are close to 90 years old and viewed in a three-dimensional way,” Seftel said. “That’s what people connect with, that she’s not just a stereotype.”
Upending stereotypes was also the goal for his series Secret Life of Muslims, which showed that Muslim Americans might just be regular people, the kind who work as comedians, fashion designers, wrestlers, and YouTubers.
In many ways, helping us see each other as individuals—not as a religion, an age, or a sexual orientation—has remained a theme of the films and TV series Seftel has been making for more than three decades.
Three Films by Smartypants
This six-minute music video, created to call patrons back to Broadway after the pandemic closure, is a valentine to the city. Kelli O’Hara, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and other Tony winners join Stephen Colbert and a host of New York stars and personalities—is that Suzanne Vega at the counter in Tom’s Restaurant?—to perform the Billy Joel standard. (2021)
The Many Sad Fates of Mr. Toledano
Phillip Toledano, A91, was obsessed with his future, consulting psychics and DNA tests for clues about what horrors awaited him. He created elaborate photo shoots where he acted out the ways he feared his life might fall apart, including homelessness, obesity, alcoholism, and violent death. Seftel’s 25-minute film documents the project, along with the increasing concern of Toledano’s wife. (2015)
The most-watched film Seftel has ever directed? It may be Delta’s 100th anniversary safety video—yes, one of those ones about adjusting seatbelts and noting the exits. But the five-minute film is memorable for its documentary influence, with flight attendants wearing vintage uniforms (designers Edith Head and Hart Schaffner Marx are name-checked) from past decades. (2025)
Earlier in his career, Seftel would often go back to Tufts to teach seminars. That’s how Nichols, then a theater major with an interest in film, met the director. Alums of that era may know Nichols as the creator of Mouthwash, the Jumbo TV series about a group of college students navigating hook up culture. It helped get him a spot at the renowned American Film Institute for graduate school. He then directed commercials and music videos in L.A. before reconnecting with Seftel and joining Smartypants, where he stayed from 2015 to earlier this year.
Part of his work as director of creative development involved pitching projects and finding funding. Smartypants has long worked outside the system when it comes to funding its films. Rather than rely on the same big players, such as streaming services, it taps different investors for different projects, often locating new sources each time.
“We’ve always thought of every film we do as a startup that needs its own unique apparatus to succeed,” Nichols said.
He sees something of a Tufts ethos in the Smartypants vibe: Employees want to change the world, but they are practical about it. “They’re OK making a profit, but they definitely have a purpose and a mission to the work.”
In her junior year at Tufts, Rowe, a psychology major, took the course Producing Films for Social Change, and found her calling. After graduating, she did an informational interview with Seftel shortly before he was in the market for a production manager. “Sometimes, you just have to be at the right place when a job opens; don’t give up,” she tells interns all the time.
Richard McKinney, an ex-Marine who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, was outraged anytime he saw a Muslim in his hometown of Muncie, Indiana. He planned to bomb a local mosque—until he came to know the people who worshipped there. Seftel's film of the story, “Stranger at the Gate,” earned Smartypants its first Academy Award nomination. Photo: Karl Schroder
Today, as head of production, she organizes the teams who make the films, picking the director, producer, and director of photography as well as handling the budgets and legal questions. Right now, she’s juggling 15 projects. She describes her job as designing and assembling a bunch of Rube Goldberg machines: “I set it up, let it go, and really hope that it all works.”
The alums touch each project in various ways. For example, while researching ideas for the Secret Life of Muslims series, Rowe found an article in a student newspaper about Richard McKinney, an ex-Marine who had planned to bomb a local mosque—until he came to know the people who worshipped there. It became a five-minute film that Seftel directed for the series.
Then Nichols urged Seftel to expand the short into a longer film, bringing in the points of view of McKinney’s family and the mosque members who welcomed him in. The result, Stranger at the Gate, garnered Smartypants its first Academy Award nomination, thanks in part to a campaign that Bond put together.
Filmmaker Joshua Seftel, A90, center, celebrated at the Oscars this spring with other Tufts alums who helped produce the film All the Empty Rooms; from left, Anna Bick Rowe, A12, Jon Levin, A75, Avi Bond, A21, and Eric Nichols, A11. Photo: Courtesy of Smartypants
When Seftel first asked Bond if she would run that campaign, she jumped at the chance—not that she knew what that meant. “I had no idea that even existed,” she said of the process, which she likened to a political campaign. But she learned on the fly, running dozens of events across the country where Academy members could watch the film and hear from Seftel.
As she transitioned from intern to employee, Bond found support from her more experienced colleagues. “I always felt comfortable taking on challenges and making mistakes,” she said. And Seftel took time to share his knowledge whenever he could by, say, teaching Bond about camera angles while waiting for their plane to the next event.
After the success of that campaign, Bond was eager to be involved with the next project from the start. It turned out to be All the Empty Rooms. When the film won the Oscar, it was “a full body, adrenaline moment,” she said, proud to be one of the many Tufts alums who made it happen.
