TIFF Interview: “Re/Pair” Director Lacey Schwartz Delgado

The new documentary Re/Pair, from director Lacey Schwartz Delgado, features a series of conversations between Black and Jewish Americans on the topic of tensions and solidarity between their respective groups. I saw the film ahead of the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival (during which I reviewed it) and then during the festival spoke in person with Schwartz Delgado. Here is that conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed: You are both African American and Jewish, and this dual identity informs this latest work of yours. I haven’t seen your documentary Little White Lie, but I was wondering if you could talk about the journey from that personal documentary in 2015 to this new film.

Lacey Schwartz Delgado: Absolutely. So Little White Lie follows my story of growing up in a white Jewish family in upstate New York and finding out at the age of 18 that my biological father was black; my mother had an affair and no one talked about it. And so the film is really about dual identity and family secrets. And huge themes in the film are denial and the power of having tough conversations and why we need to have such conversations.

So I think, for me, that theme has been a big part of my work and is also a huge theme in Re/Pair, whichfollows 19 pairs of Black and Jewish individuals, some of whom are also both Black and Jewish, to have real conversations about their own experiences in their own communities and in the other community and to talk about how these communities have come together and apart throughout modern history. But on a larger level, what this film is about is the power, once again, of difficult conversations, about people being able to speak their own truths and also listen to each other and how those conversations can help to rebuild trust.

CLR: What were you looking for as you prepared to shoot the interviews? How did you choose your duos for these onscreen pairings?

LSD: It was quite an involved process and very much a team process. We did a lot of brainstorming, we researched people, we did lots and lots of charts. And so it was a combination of reaching out to people that we thought would be interesting and then, of course, like with anything, we had to also work off of availability and willingness, because we were doing this in quite a constrained timeframe. And then, sometimes, with some of the pairs, once we got one person who said, “Yes, I’d be interested in doing this,” we said, “Is there somebody you’d like to sit down and talk with, either that you know or don’t know?” And so we spent a lot of time really massaging that, but also we were mindful of wanting to have certain kinds of people involved in from a cultural background. We wanted a lot of artists and creators and people who through their work are themselves wrestling, not just with these issues, but with many issues of who they are and what the world around them is about.

CLR: You have 19 pairs. Were there additional interviews you shot that maybe didn’t make the cut?

LSD: Yes, there are two interviews that we shot that did not make the cut, one of which is also eventually going to be featured on the website.

CLR: Or in the Blu-ray special features. (laughs)

LSD: (laughs) Exactly.

CLR: You write in the press notes that you were looking for your subjects to talk and not debate. Were there times when that premise was tested in these conversations, where perhaps things got a little more heated than intended?

LSD: My short answer would be no, because I think that these conversations in the film are real. These conversations are not avoiding tension and, to me, talking can still involve tension. I think debating to me is more like you go to debate club, you learn how to argue one side of the argument no matter what. In a debate, there’s no, “OK, I actually hear your point.” When’s the last time we saw in a presidential election two candidates saying, “Actually, that’s a good point. Maybe I’ll do that, too”? You know what I mean? That’s just not the way debates go down and that wasn’t what we were interested in, but it doesn’t mean that we’re avoiding tension. It doesn’t mean that we are avoiding difference of opinion in any way.

CLR: I would argue that Tim Walz did a little bit of that with JD Vance in the vice-presidential debate, which is why he didn’t do so well, because he kept on agreeing with Vance.

LSD: That’s an interesting perspective. I’ll have to go back and look at that.

CLR: But yes, I take your point. I really like how you photographed the interviews. What did you and your DP [Director of Photography], Adam Uhl, talk about ahead of time?

LSD: Well, my producer, Tamara Rosenberg, who’s such a big part of the creative process of this film on every level, had worked with Adam in the past and really from the beginning thought that he would be perfect, because we knew we wanted to shoot these in studio. We wanted to shoot them in a beautiful and interesting way that would capture these pairs. I appreciate you asking me this question and it is such a big part of the film, how we shot these people, because we figured that we needed enough coverage of them to make sure we could actually show their conversation, but we also decided to have them sit face forward to the camera and in conversation with me. So we spent a lot of time with Adam talking about what the options were and he had some ideas and was able to mock them up for us. And we actually did a test shoot to make sure that they worked and that we were getting all the angles that we wanted to.

CLR: And where were you in terms of your position, vis-à-vis camera and the subjects, as these interviews were being filmed?

LSD: I was being projected in front of the camera lens.

CLR: Sort of like an Errol Morris Interrotron?

LSD: Exactly. So we went with that, which is obviously a brilliant and lovely approach. And so I was kind of in the room, but behind a curtain so that it wasn’t distracting and they were looking at me being kind of zoomed in—literally the Zoom company—in front of the lens. 

CLR: That’s really fascinating. Speaking of material that’s in the film, you take what is essentially a series of interviews and make it quite cinematic, and that’s partly the result of the quality of the frame that’s so beautiful to look at, but you also have some really great B-roll. What was the process of gathering that supportive material like?

LSD: We worked with a wonderful archivist, Gabriela Gallas. We had an idea of some of what we wanted and the energy that we wanted; we wanted it to be different. We wanted moments that didn’t just feel like the same moments you’ve seen over and over again, that felt a little bit more interesting or unexpected. And so we did a fair amount of research and really watched them.

One of the things we also did is we showed a bunch of that archival in the actual interviews so that our participants would take part of the interview to be actually watching it in real time. And you see there are a few moments where we’re actually shooting through it onto them or shooting them watching that footage. And so we wanted a way to make it feel like the archival wasn’t just going to be placed on top of the film, as it frequently is, but was actually more of an immersive experience. So even though you don’t always see them watching it, the reaction you get from them is in real time of them actually consuming that. 

CLR: And what’s nice, too, is that you include the long history of Jewish support for the Civil Rights movement, which is really an important part of this nation’s history that we can’t forget, these more recent tensions notwithstanding. I also appreciate the inclusion of worries about the Nation of Islam within the Jewish community.

LSD: Yes, there are a few people who speak to that and that was really important to me because I had for a long time heard a lot of the justifiable concerns and feelings within the Jewish community about some of the horrific things that Minister Farrakhan has said about Jews and the Jewish community. And then it’s kind of always like almost this confusion of, “Well, why isn’t he just cast out completely from the Black community?” And I think we need to talk about that. We need to hear why that doesn’t necessarily happen. I think, too often, people have these conversations like it therefore justifies things.

And it’s not about justifying; it’s the reality. The reality is the Nation of Islam plays a very important role, or has and continues to, within many Black spaces. And we need to be able to acknowledge that in order to understand what is or isn’t happening. And I really had felt that there wasn’t enough space being given to that in the conversations that were being had. And again, it’s not just about representing both points of view. It is about actually having a real conversation based in the reality of why things are going down the way they are.

CLR: And I also appreciate how you allow your subjects to really make these conversations personal. I was moved by Van Jones, who is often a very centrist person, talking about his own experience as an African American man. He makes it very, very poignant in that conversation, where he just allows himself to be so personal. How did you help everyone relax enough so that they could go down that path?

LSD: Well, first of all, thank you for seeing that. That was very important to me. I think a lot of people see soundbites of people and it can completely frame what they think about them. But, for me, what I maintain about this film is there’s not one person in this film who is a representative of their community. They are representing themselves. And it was therefore really important to ask them about their personal experiences, ask them where they came from, what they inherited from their own families and how that translated into who they became.

And then if necessary, at times, I had to remind them that if anybody started to generalize about “This is how Blacks feel” or “This is how Jews feel” that, “No, there are lots of different ways that Black people feel and lots of different ways that Jews feel – let’s talk about your experience.” Because I know as I’m sitting here interviewing the 38 people that are featured in this film that there is such diversity. There is such a spectrum of thoughts and feelings on countless issues. And so it would be completely erroneous to actually try to generalize how Blacks or Jews feel about any one issue. So let’s talk about how you feel so that we can do this film, and others, as much justice as possible by seeing that diversity.

CLR: Absolutely. No group is a monolith. No one person is representative of the entire group. My final question, speaking of personal … I haven’t ever interviewed somebody who’s married to a politician. Your husband is Antonio Delgado, who is the Lieutenant Governor of New York. Since his ascension to such a large stage, have you in your own work thought about how it will now fall under greater scrutiny, especially because he’s a Democrat. Nobody seems to care what Republicans do; they’re allowed to do anything. But as a Democrat, surely he is coming under greater scrutiny now that he’s Lieutenant Governor. Have you thought about how that might affect the choices you make in your work because of how it might affect his political career?

LSD: Well, I feel very grateful to have made my personal documentary before we as a family got into politics. Because again, it is about being completely open, about exposing secrets and being very honest about who I am. And I think that is the spirit with which we entered politics. We entered politics being real people. I mean, that was our inspiration. We were not traditional political people. We were motivated after the 2016 presidential elections to do more because we saw a lot of people who, like me, were change-oriented.

I look at myself as an impact storyteller, but we weren’t getting involved in traditional politics. And I thought, “Well, what if more of us got more involved?” And I can speak for my husband in saying that getting involved was about still staying those real people, not actually staying in politics just for the sake of staying in politics. It’s about being able to make a difference. And if we’re not going to make a difference, we don’t have to be involved in it.

So that is a long way of saying that I am not afraid of the scrutiny, that I feel like I lead with being able to be open and vulnerable. And I actually think, just like in this film, that is what people want. That’s what they want to hear from other people. And I think that’s what they want for themselves.

CLR: People want authenticity. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Lacey Schwartz Delgado, for talking to me. I really enjoyed your film and I wish you all good things with it.

LSD: Thank you. I appreciate this conversation.