YidLife Team
Eli Batalion -
Leizer
ELI BATALION is a writer, producer, director, actor and composer for film, TV, the web and the stage.
Eli began his career in musical theatre with the hit the award-winning internationally touring play “JOB: The Hip-Hop Musical.” He and partner Jerome Sable evolved their theatre work to the screen with the musical horror comedy short The Legend of Beaver Dam, selected to TIFF, Sundance, Berlinale and over 75 global film festivals, and to the feature horror musical comedy Stage Fright, featuring Minnie Driver and Meat Loaf and produced by Serendipity Point Films.
YidLife Crisis, Eli’s latest project done together with partner Jamie Elman, has been an award-winning success at the convergence of web series and culture. It has grown from an award-winning web series to a series of digital projects and global live touring.
Eli’s writing/directing start-up feature film comedy, APPINESS, was released through distributor Gravitas Ventures in 2020.
Eli holds a DEC in Creative Arts from Dawson College, a B.A. from Brown University and an M.B.A. from HEC Montréal.
Jamie Elman - Chaimie
Jamie Elman is an actor, writer, director, producer and musician. He has appeared on some of television’s most acclaimed series including Mad Men, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and House M.D. and for three seasons of NBC’s critically lauded drama American Dreams. His breakout role was Cody on the FOX/YTV teen sitcom Student Bodies.
Along with Eli Batalion, Jamie co-created the award-winning Yiddish web series YidLife Crisis, which has over 3 million online views and four prestigious Canadian Screen Award nominations, including Best Actor and, two years in a row, Best Digital Series. As ‘comedy peacekeepers’, YidLife regularly performs live all over Canada, the US, Europe and Israel, and has twice been named to the Slingshot Guide as one of the Top 50 Most Innovative Jewish Organizations in North America. Jamie recently starred in the Toronto production of the play BAD JEWS, his third run of that show in 3 years.
Career film highlights include California Dreamin’ (Grand Prix, Un Certain Regard, Cannes Film Festival), When Nietzsche Wept (portraying a young Sigmund Freud) and the series finale of beloved Canadian drama Bomb Girls. Voice work includes animated Disney blockbusters Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen. He co-created and starred in the web series crazy/sexy/awkward for Fremantle Media, which was acquired by Howie Mandel.
A native of Montreal and graduate of McGill University, Jamie is a pianist and singer who has recorded with Ben Harper, Natalie Maines and Rickie Lee Jones, and plays most Monday nights for the last decade at The Varnish cocktail bar in his adopted hometown of LA.
Philip Kalin-Hajdu - Producer
PHILIP KALIN-HAJDU has worked in many key areas of film, television and digital media in a career that has spanned over 15 years. Recently, as producer and co-director, Philip delivered a 13 x 60 min travel series “Mon Israel” to Canal Evasion for the 2014 season. Filmed in only a few weeks, Philip led a crew throughout Israel and the West Bank to portray over 50 unique individuals and locations. In 2015, he produced Erin Laing’s short film, “Timber”, funded by BravoFact, which premiered at the Rendez-Vous de Cinema Quebecois.
Philip is a graduate of Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema – Bachelor of Fine Arts, With Distinction, Specialization in Film Production. In addition, Philip works as a writing consultant on numerous feature and short film screenplays, and is a guest lecturer at notable institutions including Dawson College and Concordia University. Philip taught screenwriting at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts and for the Montreal J-way Program and has acted as consultant to Adobe for their screenwriting software. Philip juries for SODEC, Quebec’s cultural financing body and sits on the jury of the JCF Culture Committee, responsible for the annual allocation of a quarter of a million dollars towards the arts.