Mark Jonathan Harris is an American documentary filmmaker, writer, and educator known for his award-winning work in the documentary genre. Over the course of his career, Harris has earned three Academy Awards and numerous accolades for his contributions to filmmaking and education. He served as a Distinguished Professor and Head of Advanced Documentary Production at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where he taught from 1983 until his retirement in 2023. Harris is also an accomplished author, having written five children's novels and a collection of short stories.
Walter F. Parkes is an American producer, screenwriter, and media executive. The producer of more than 50 films, including the Men in Black series and Minority Report, he is the co-founder and co-chairman of Dreamscape Immersive.
Participant Media, LLC was an American independent film and television production company founded in 2004 by Jeffrey Skoll, dedicated to entertainment intended to spur social change. The company financed and co-produced film and television content, as well as digital entertainment through its subsidiary SoulPancake, which the company acquired in 2016.
Tia Lessin is an American documentary filmmaker. Lessin has produced and directed documentaries, earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary, three Emmy Awards, two primetime Emmy Nominations, the duPont Columbia Award, and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Documentary.
Dana Brunetti is an American media executive, film producer and entrepreneur.
Andrew Rossi is an American filmmaker, Emmy nominated for directing, writing and producing The Andy Warhol Diaries (2022), Ivory Tower (2014) and Page One: Inside the New York Times (2011).
David Linde has served as the CEO of Participant, chairman of Universal Pictures, co-founder of Focus Features, partner in the New York production company Good Machine, and owner of Lava Bear Films, where he produced the multi-Oscar nominated film Arrival. Films released during his tenures collectively earned more than $15 billion globally, with 204 Oscar nominations and 46 wins.
Glen Zipper is an American writer, film producer and former New Jersey assistant state prosecutor.
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.
Mel Lawrence was an American film director and producer and former concert and festival promoter. He is best known for his role as the Director of Operations at the Woodstock Festival, his work on the Qatsi Trilogy, and for directing and producing the Emmy-nominated documentary Paha Sapa: The Struggle for the Black Hills.
Donatella Palermo is an Italian producer. She received Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature nominations for Fire at Sea with director Gianfranco Rosi at 89th Academy Awards.
Benjamin Saul Winston is a British producer, director and a founding partner of Fulwell 73. He has won 13 Emmy Awards and been nominated 33 times. He holds the record for the individual with the most Emmy nominations in any one year, when in 2019, he received 8 nominations. Business Insider described him as “the most influential producer in television.”
Yance Ford is an African-American transgender producer and director.
Thomas Lee Wright is an American author, screenwriter and Academy Award-nominated filmmaker. A Minnesota native, Wright attended Harvard University, writing and directing plays and earning a degree in English Literature with honors. He studied Irish Theater at Trinity College, Dublin, and played point guard for its national championship basketball team.
Laura Checkoway is a documentary filmmaker and writer, known for her documentary Edith+Eddie for which she received an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject nomination at the 90th Academy Awards. The film also received an Emmy nomination and won numerous awards including the IDA Documentary Awards Best Short. In The New Yorker, critic Richard Brody wrote: “One of the most impressive aspects of Checkoway’s film is that, with a simple and straightforward approach, she brings the overwhelming force of abstract institutions seemingly onto the screen.” Academy Award winning filmmaker Julia Reichert called Edith+Eddie "One of the most beautiful and quietly furious films I've ever seen." Checkoway's documentary The Cave of Adullam is executive produced by Laurence Fishburne and premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2022, winning top prizes Best Documentary Feature, Best Editing, and the Audience Award. In an interview with Deadline, Fishburne said: “She has a cinematic sensitivity and a doctor’s bedside manner... Laura doesn’t impose her personality or her energy onto anything. It boils down to her humanity and her ability to see the humanity in all…” The film was released by ESPN Films. She received NYWIFT’s Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking Award in 2022.
Hale County This Morning, This Evening is a 2018 American documentary film about the lives of African Americans in Hale County, Alabama. It is directed by RaMell Ross and produced by RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes, Su Kim, and is Ross's first nonfiction feature. The documentary is the winner of 2018 Sundance Film Festival award for U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Creative Vision, 2018 Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Cinema Eye Honors Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It was released in theaters on September 14, 2018, later aired on television as part of the PBS series Independent Lens, and eventually won a 2020 Peabody Award.
RaMell Ross is an American filmmaker, photographer, academic, and writer. His directorial debut, Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018), earned him a Peabody Award, and nominations for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. Ross directed and co-wrote the screenplay for the 2024 film adaptation of the novel The Nickel Boys (2019), for which he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Geralyn White Dreyfous is an American film producer. She has produced multiple documentary and narrative films focusing on social justice issues including The Invisible War (2012), The Square (2013), The Hunting Ground (2015), Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018), The Great Hack (2019), and On the Record (2020). Dreyfous has been nominated for Primetime Emmy awards.
Louverture Films is an American independent film and television production company founded in 2005 by Danny Glover and Joslyn Barnes. The company is known for producing Bamako (2006), Salt of this Sea (2008), Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), The House I Live In (2012), Strong Island (2017), Capernaum (2018), Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018), Prayers for the Stolen (2021), and Nickel Boys (2024).
Nickel Boys is a 2024 American historical drama film based on the 2019 novel The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. It was directed by RaMell Ross, who co-wrote the screenplay with Joslyn Barnes, and stars Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson, alongside Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. The story follows two African-American boys, Elwood and Turner, who are sent to an abusive reform school in 1960s Florida. The film is inspired by the Dozier School for Boys, a now-closed Florida reform school notorious for its abusive treatment of students.
