Sami Amin Al-Arian is a Kuwaiti-born political activist of Palestinian origin who was a computer engineering professor at University of South Florida. During the Clinton administration and Bush administration, he was invited to the White House. He actively campaigned for the Bush presidential campaign in the United States presidential election in 2000.
Lourdes Portillo was a Mexican film director, producer, and writer. The political perspectives of Portillo's films have been described as "nuanced" and versed with a point of view balanced by her experience as a lesbian and Chicana woman. Portillo films have been widely studied and analyzed, particularly by scholars in the field of Chicano studies.
Andrei Lvovich Nekrasov is a Russian film and TV director from Saint Petersburg.
Deep Water is a 2006 British documentary film directed by Jerry Rothwell and Louise Osmond, and produced by Al Morrow, Jonny Persey and John Smithson. It is based on the true story of British businessman and amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst, as he participated in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a single-handed, round-the-world yacht race held in 1968–69, during which he disappeared. The film reconstructs Crowhurst's voyage from his own audio tapes and cine film, interwoven with archival footage and interviews.
Redacted is a 2007 American war film written and directed by Brian De Palma. It is a fictional dramatization, loosely based on the 2006 Mahmudiyah killings in Mahmoudiyah, Iraq, when U.S. Army soldiers raped an Iraqi girl and murdered her along with her family. This film, which is a companion piece to an earlier film by De Palma, Casualties of War (1989), was shot in Jordan.
Ulrik Imtiaz Rolfsen is a Norwegian film director, producer and writer. He is best known for his action drama IZZAT (2005), his TV series TAXI (2011) as well as documentary films Voluntarily Forced (2014) and Recruiting for Jihad (2017). He often addresses national- and global discussion concerning immigration and racism both in his films as well as being an outspoken newspaper columnist and television debattant. In 2012 he founded the Oslo-based production company Curry Film AS. Other films directed by him, are the crime thriller Varg Veum - Bitter Flowers (2007) and the slacker comedy The Last Joint Venture (2008).
Matej Mináč is a Slovak film director. Mináč has directed three films about Sir Nicholas Winton, a Briton who organized the rescue of 669 Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport: the drama All My Loved Ones (1999), the documentary The Power of Good: Nicholas Winton (2002), which won an Emmy Award, the documentary with feature re-enactments Nicky's Family (2011) and Children Saved from the Nazis: The Story of Sir Nicholas Winton (2016).
Line Halvorsen is a Norwegian film maker. She was educated at the University of Trondheim and in the documentary film department at Volda University College.
Rakhshān Banietemad is an Iranian film director and screenwriter. Her title as "First Lady of Iranian Cinema" is not only a reference to her prominence as a filmmaker, but also connotes her social role of merging politics and family in her work. Her signature style is that she focuses on a character representing a part of society to explore it while staying objectively neutral. The first period of Banietemad's cinematic activity originates from dark humor. Still, in the second period of her work, dark humor gives way to serious and influential films, and deeper and broader issues are addressed. Banietemad has a more realistic view of life.
The Abu Dhabi Film Festival, formerly the Middle East International Film Festival (MEIFF), was an international film festival held in the city of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates from 2007 to 2015.
Neshoba: The Price of Freedom is a 2008 documentary film about events and attitudes in Neshoba County, Mississippi, especially the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. The film premiered at the 2008 Indie Memphis Film Festival, where it won the Jury Award for Best Documentary.
"Side by Side" Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival is an international film festival that seeks to explore the issues of homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender (LGBT) through art cinema. Since 2008 it has taken place every autumn in Saint Petersburg, Russia. In addition, various special events are held almost every month, and since 2009 film showings and discussions have also been conducted in other parts of Russia.
Marco Amenta is an Italian director, producer, and photojournalist.
Joachim Trier is a Danish-born Norwegian filmmaker. His films have been described as "melancholy meditations concerned with existential questions of love, ambition, memory, and identity." He has received numerous nominations including for a Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, two Cesar Awards, and three Cannes Film Festival Awards.
Teta, Alf Marra is an Arabic language documentary film about a feisty Beiruti grandmother.
Nicolas Rossier is an American filmmaker and reporter best known for his biographical documentaries of the former president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide and South African Nobel Peace Prize co-recipient F.W. de Klerk.
Andreu Jacob is a Catalan composer. He works in such musical genres as classical and contemporary music, jazz, flamenco and other musical styles.
Nose, Iranian Style is a 2005 Iranian documentary film directed by Mehrdad Oskouei. It is about nose jobs (rhinoplasty) in Iran, which statistically has the most of any country. The documentary employs a semi-comedic tone, with the title referencing the earlier film Divorce, Iranian Style. Nose, Iranian Style relates the trend to politics, with it and the 2007 documentary Tehran: 11 pm connecting it to the importance of appearance, given the taboo of men and women directly and socially interacting. However, Oskouei said the film was truly a critique of excessive consumerism.
Ryan White is a documentary producer and director best known for his Netflix documentary film Pamela, a Love Story, Amazon Prime's Good Night Oppy, which won five Critics Choice Awards including Best Documentary and Best Director, and his Emmy-nominated Netflix series The Keepers. White's previous films include the HBO movie The Case Against 8, which won Sundance's Directing Award and was nominated for two Emmys, the documentary film Ask Dr. Ruth, and Coded, which was shortlisted for the Academy Award.
Flee is a 2021 independent adult animated documentary film directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen. An international co-production with Denmark, France, Norway, and Sweden, it follows the story of a man under the alias Amin Nawabi, who shares his hidden past of fleeing his home country of Afghanistan to Denmark for the first time. Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau serve as executive producers and narrators for the English-language dub version.
