After discovering she is 13% Jewish, filmmaker Renée Wilson goes back to her home state of Louisiana to discover the Ashkenazi Jewish family lineage she never knew existed, revealing painful family secrets and the complex relationship of Black and Jewish people in the heart of the deep South.
THE 13TH PERCENT is a personal documentary exploring filmmaker Renée Wilson's unexpected discovery of her non-Jewish African American family's 13% Ashkenazi Jewish heritage in a 2018 DNA report, which the report attributed to either a grandparent or a great grandparent. The revelation offered a tantalizing clue to a longstanding family mystery, the identity of Wilson's paternal great-grandfather and his family. Wilson's grandfather never knew his father, but his light complexion and mother's job working in the "big house" of a former plantation in Louisiana's German Coast hinted at a painful past. Armed with this new knowledge, Wilson embarks on a journey seeking to reveal her own family history and the complex ways that Louisiana's Black and Jewish communities have long been intertwined.
Renée Wilson is an award-winning director, writer, producer, and performer whose work spans film, music, and audio storytelling. A proud native of New Orleans, she made her feature acting debut portraying Raelette Pat Lyle in the Academy Award-winning film “Ray” and has since built a directing practice centered on character-driven stories rooted in place, history, and emotional truth.
She is the executive producer and lead actress of “Red for Revolution,” a Tribeca Award–winning narrative audio drama centering intergenerational stories of Black women, love, and liberation. The series is currently nominated for two AMBIE Awards for Best Fiction Podcast and Best Scriptwriting, Fiction.
Renée wrote, directed, and co-produced the documentary “Crepe Covered Sidewalks,” a portrait of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, which was the centerpiece film of the New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival and earned her a Best New Filmmaker award. Her short film “Ode to Joy” won the Audience Award for Stunning Short Film at the Maui Film Festival. Her work has also been recognized with the BAVC and Reel Stories Triple Threat Award, and she was named a Jewish Film Institute Filmmaker in Residence and an Alliance of Women Directors Film Fellow through the Black Directors Advancement Initiative.
Through her production company, Meta Mana Media, Renée develops and produces projects that amplify underrepresented voices and honor stories rooted in culture, care, and collective humanity.
Jewish Film Institute 2023 - Filmmaker in Residence
