39 Pounds of Love is a film written and directed by Dani Menkin, with co-writer, Ilan Heitner. It stars Ami Ankilewitz, a 34-year-old Israeli 3D animator who lived with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). The documentary centers on his journey across the United States by motorhome to find the doctor who told his mother when he was born that he would not live past the age of 6. [2] The title refers to the fact that Ankilewitz weighed only 39 pounds during his cross-country trip due to the rare form of SMA/2 that he was born with. Even though he could not move any part of his body except for one finger, he was still determined to use that finger to create 3D animations and live his life as he would if he had not suffered from SMA. [2] 39 Pounds of Love was officially released on April 5, 2005 and was re-released on DVD on October 6, 2009. [3]
39 Pounds of Love won Best Documentary at both the Tahoe/Reno and Palm Beach Film Festivals, and won the Audience Award at both the Tallgrass and Boston Jewish Film Festival. [2] The film was also placed on the Oscar short list for the Best Documentary Feature category in 2005. [4]
Volker Schlöndorff is a German film director, screenwriter and producer who has worked in Germany, France and the United States. He was a prominent member of the New German Cinema of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
James Francis Ivory is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. For many years, he worked extensively with Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant, his domestic as well as professional partner, and with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. All three were principals in Merchant Ivory Productions, whose films have won seven Academy Awards; Ivory himself has been nominated for four Oscars, winning one.
Ryan is a 2004 short animated documentary film created and directed by Chris Landreth about Canadian animator Ryan Larkin, who had lived on skid row in Montreal as a result of drug and alcohol abuse. Landreth's chance meeting with Larkin in 2000 inspired him to develop the film, which took 18 months to complete. It was co-produced by Copper Heart Entertainment and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), and its creation and development is the subject of the NFB documentary Alter Egos. The film incorporated material from archive sources, particularly Larkin's works at the NFB.
William Benedict Nicholson, OBE, FRSL is a British screenwriter, playwright, and novelist who has been nominated twice for an Oscar.
Dennis Muren, A.S.C is an American film visual effects artist and supervisor. He has worked on the films of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and James Cameron, among others, and has won nine Oscars in total: eight for Best Visual Effects and a Technical Achievement Academy Award. The Visual Effects Society has called him "a perpetual student, teacher, innovator, and mentor."
Moshé Mizrahi was an Israeli film director.
West Bank Story is a 2005 American musical comedy short film directed by Ari Sandel, co-written by Sandel and Kim Ray, produced by Pascal Vaguelsy, Amy Kim, Ashley Jordan, Ravi Malhotra, Bill Boland, and featuring choreography by Ramon Del Barrio. The film is a parody of the classic 1961 musical film West Side Story, which in turn is an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. The film follows the rivalry between falafel restaurants, one Israeli and the other Palestinian, respectively named the "Kosher King" and the "Hummus Hut," and the romance between the latter's cashier and an Israeli soldier in the West Bank. The film stars Ben Newmark as the IDF soldier, Noureen DeWulf as the Palestinian cashier, A.J. Tannen as the Israeli restaurant owner, and Joey Naber as his Palestinian rival.
Murray Lerner was an American documentary and experimental film director and producer.
James Marsh is a British film and documentary director best known for his work on Man on Wire, which won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and The Theory of Everything, the multi-award-winning biopic of physicist Stephen Hawking released in 2014.
Waltz with Bashir is a 2008 Israeli adult animated war docudrama film written, produced, and directed by Ari Folman. It depicts Folman's search for lost memories of his experience as a soldier during the 1982 Lebanon War and the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
The animated documentary is a moving image form that combines animation and documentary. This form should not be confused with documentaries about movie and TV animation history that feature excerpts.
Roger Ross Williams is an American director, producer and writer and the first African American director to win an Academy Award (Oscar), with his short film Music by Prudence; this film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film in 2009.
Rhian Sheehan is a New Zealand composer and producer born in Nelson and now based in Wellington. He is known for his fusing of orchestral chamber music and piano, with ambient electronic and post-rock cinematic atmospheres. He has also written music for film, television, video games, exhibitions, advertisements, roller coaster rides, and planetarium dome shows.
Dani Menkin is a Los Angeles-based writer, director, and film producer. He is a two-time Israeli Academy Award winner and the founder of film production company Hey Jude Productions.
Daniel Fridell is a Swedish film director and producer.
5 Broken Cameras is a 94-minute documentary film co-directed by Palestinian Emad Burnat and Israeli Guy Davidi. It was shown at film festivals in 2011 and placed in general release by Kino Lorber in 2012. 5 Broken Cameras is a first-hand account of protests in Bil'in, a West Bank village affected by the Israeli West Bank barrier. The documentary was shot almost entirely by Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat, who bought his first camera in 2005 to record the birth of his youngest son. In 2009 Israeli co-director Guy Davidi joined the project. Structured around the destruction of Burnat's cameras, the filmmakers' collaboration follows one family's evolution over five years of turmoil. The film won a 2012 Sundance Film Festival award, it won the Golden Apricot at the 2012 Yerevan International Film Festival, Armenia, for Best Documentary Film, won the 2013 International Emmy Award, and was nominated for a 2013 Academy Award.
Guy Davidi is an Israeli documentary filmmaker. His movie 5 Broken Cameras was nominated for the 2013 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Davidi also won the Best Directing Award along with Palestinian co-director Emad Burnat in the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and the 2013 international Emmy Award as well as numerous awards worldwide.
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is an American documentary filmmaker. She was the director, along with her husband, Jimmy Chin, for the film Free Solo, which won the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film profiled Alex Honnold and his free solo climb of El Capitan in June 2017.
Matthew Heineman is an American documentary filmmaker, director, and producer. His inspiration and fascination with American history led him to early success with the documentary film Cartel Land, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film, a BAFTA Award for Best Documentary, and won three Primetime Emmy Awards.
Evgeny Mikhailovich Afineevsky is an Israeli-American film director, producer and cinematographer. He has an Academy Award nomination and Emmy nominations for his documentary Winter on Fire. Afineevsky resides in the United States.