Jafar Panâhi is an Iranian film director, screenwriter, and film editor, commonly associated with the Iranian New Wave film movement. After several years of making short films and working as an assistant director for fellow Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, Panahi achieved international recognition with his feature film debut, The White Balloon (1995). The film won the Caméra d'Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, the first major award an Iranian film won at Cannes.
Ryan Larkin was a Canadian animator, artist, and sculptor who rose to fame with the psychedelic Oscar-nominated short Walking (1968) and the acclaimed Street Musique (1972). He was the subject of the Oscar-winning film Ryan.
Les Blank was an American documentary filmmaker best known for his portraits of American traditional musicians.
Bahman Ghobadi is an Iranian Kurdish film director, producer and writer. He belongs to the "new wave" of Iranian cinema.
Haskell Wexler was an American cinematographer, film producer, and director. Wexler was judged to be one of film history's ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild. He won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography twice, in 1966 and 1976, out of five nominations. In his obituary in The New York Times, Wexler is described as being "renowned as one of the most inventive cinematographers in Hollywood."
Kim Longinotto is a British documentary film maker, well known for making films that highlight the plight of female victims of oppression or discrimination. Longinotto has made more than 20 films, usually featuring inspiring women and girls at their core. Her subjects have included female genital mutilation in Kenya, women standing up to rapists in India, and the story of Salma, an Indian Muslim woman who smuggled poetry out to the world while locked up by her family for decades.
The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is the largest documentary festival in North America. The event takes place annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The 27th edition of the festival took place online throughout May and June 2020. In addition to the annual festival, Hot Docs owns and operates the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, administers multiple production funds, and runs year-round screening programs including Doc Soup and Hot Docs Showcase.
Gerald Peary is an American film critic, filmmaker, editor of the University Press of Mississippi, and a former curator of the Harvard Film Archive.
Su Friedrich is an American avant-garde film director, producer, writer, and cinematographer. She has been a leading figure in avant-garde filmmaking and a pivotal force in the establishment of Queer Cinema.
Rob Nilsson is a filmmaker, poet, and painter, best known for his feature film Northern Lights, co-directed with John Hanson and winner of the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival (1979). He also is known for directing and playing the lead role in Heat and Sunlight, produced by Steve and Hildy Burns, also featuring Consuelo Faust, Don Bajema and Ernie Fosseliius. Heat and Sunlight won the Grand Jury Prize Dramatic at the Sundance Film Festival in 1988, and his 9 @ Night Film Cycle won the 2008 San Francisco Film Critics Circle Marlon Riggs Award for Courage and Vision in Cinema. Nilsson has also received Lifetime Achievement awards from the Fargo International Film Festival, the St. Louis International Film Festival, the Kansas City Filmmaker's Jubilee, the Master's Award from the Golden Apricot Film Festival, a Filmmaker of the Year Award from the Silver Lake Film Festival, and the Milley Award from the city of Mill Valley for accomplishment in the Arts.
Danielle Arbid is a French filmmaker of Lebanese origin who has been directing films since 1997.
The cinema of Iraq went through a downturn under Saddam Hussein's regime. The development of film and film-going in Iraq reflects the drastic historical shifts that Iraq has experienced in the 20th century. The Iraq War which began in 2003 had an influence on many films being produced.
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.
Checkpoint is a 2003 documentary film by Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir, showing the everyday interaction between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians at several of the region's Israel Defense Forces checkpoints. The film won five awards at various film festivals, including Best International Documentary at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, best feature-length documentary at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and the Golden Gate Award for Documentary Feature at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Although the film was generally well received, it was also controversial and reactions from audience members and critics were sometimes very angry.
Mahboubeh Honarian is an Iranian-Canadian film director and film producer. She was awarded her MSc in engineering multimedia and BA in Humanities with a media and cultural studies bias in the United Kingdom.
Fire from the Heartland: The Awakening of the Conservative Woman is a 2010 American documentary film written and directed by former Breitbart News LLC executive chairman Steve Bannon, and produced by David N. Bossie for Citizens United Productions. The documentary stars Michele Bachmann, Deneen Borelli, and Ann Coulter, and focuses on female participation in conservative politics.
Mehrdad Oskouei is an Iranian independent film producer, film director, screenwriter of documentary films and film educator.
The Cinema of Bolivia comprises the film and videos made within the nation of Bolivia or by Bolivian filmmakers abroad. Though the country's film infrastructure is too small to be considered a film industry, Bolivia has a rich film history. Bolivia has consistently produced feature-length films since the 1920s, many of which are documentary or take a documentary approach to their subject. Film historian José Sánchez-H has observed that the predominant theme of many Bolivian films is the country's indigenous cultures and political oppression.
Keywan Karimi is an Iranian independent filmmaker of Kurdish descent. He graduated in communication studies from the University of Tehran. Karimi began his work with a series of short documentary films that critiqued life in contemporary Iran. He was sentenced to six years in prison and 223 lashes because of the content of his films. He was released from prison in 2017.
Kimberlee Bassford is an independent documentary filmmaker from Honolulu, Hawai‘i. In 2005, she founded Making Waves Films LLC, which is a documentary production company. She advocates for gender equity and diversity in films and television. Most of her work focuses on Asian American women and young girls, and her films actively seek to correct underrepresentation of those groups in the media.
