Vanessa Roth is an American filmmaker who writes, produces and directs non-fiction films. She has won a number of awards for her films, including a 2008 Academy Award for Best Short Documentary for Freeheld ; an Emmy Honors Award for Social Impact and a IDA Nomination for best doc series for her Netflix series, Daughters of Destiny; an Alfred I duPont-Columbia award for Taken In: The Lives of America's Foster Children; Impact Doc Awards for Outstanding Achievement in filmmaking for The Girl and The Picture; two Sundance Special Jury Prizes; two Cine Golden Eagles; two Casey Medals; and a MacArthur Grant. She directed Mary J. Blige's My Life (2021).
Some of her films include Liberation Heroes: The Last Eyewitnesses, The Girl and the Picture, Freeheld, Close to Home, Aging Out, The Third Monday in October, 9/11’s Toxic Dust, No Tomorrow, The Other Side, American Teacher, [1] and The Texas Promise . She was also the executive producer, writer, and director of Daughters of Destiny: The Journey of Shanti Bhavan - a four-part Netflix original documentary series released in 2017. [2] [3]
She earned a master's degree in social work with a minor in family law from Columbia University. She lives in Shelter Island, New York, and has three children. She is the daughter of Jewish Academy Award-Winning screenwriter Eric Roth [4] and archeologist Linda Roth.
Mary Elizabeth "Sissy" Spacek is an American actress. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and nominations for four BAFTA Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award. Spacek was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011.
Elliot Page is a Canadian actor and producer. He has received various accolades, including nominations for an Academy Award, two British Academy Film Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Jordan Ladd is an American actress. The daughter of actress Cheryl Ladd and producer David Ladd, she initially worked with her mother in several made-for-television films, before making her big screen debut at 19, in the vampire film Embrace of the Vampire (1994). She subsequently appeared in the drama Nowhere (1997) and the comedy Never Been Kissed (1999). Ladd became known as a scream queen, having appeared in several successful horror films, including Cabin Fever (2002), Club Dread (2004), Death Proof (2007), and Grace (2009). Ladd is also known for work with director David Lynch appearing in his films Darkened Room (2002) and Inland Empire (2006).
Leanne Pooley ONZM is a Canadian filmmaker based in Auckland, New Zealand. Pooley was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, she immigrated to New Zealand in the mid-1980s and began working in the New Zealand television and film industry before moving to England where she worked for many of the world's top broadcasters. She returned to New Zealand in 1997 and started the production company Spacific Films. Her career spans more than 25 years and she has won numerous international awards. Leanne Pooley was made a New Zealand Arts Laureate in 2011 and an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the New Year's Honours List 2017. She is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Nanette Burstein is an American film and television director. Burstein has produced, directed, and co-directed several documentaries including the Academy Award nominated and Sundance Special Jury Prize winning film On the Ropes.
Suzanne Savoy is an American actress and voice artist best known for playing Victoria Robertson in Steven Soderbergh's Cinemax series The Knick and DNC Chairwoman Patricia Whittaker in House of Cards, and for her one-woman touring show Je Christine about late-Medieval author Christine de Pizan. She appears in and does voice-overs for many commercials, and has roles ranging from minor to starring in both film and television. Savoy appears on the Breaking Bad fan site as lawyer Perry Trivedi in the award-winning prequel series, Better Call Saul.
Cynthia Wade is an American television, commercial and film director, producer and cinematographer based in New York City. She has directed documentaries on social issues including Shelter Dogs in 2003 about animal welfare and Freeheld in 2007 about LGBT rights as well as television commercials and web campaigns. She has won over 40 film festival awards, won an Oscar in 2008, and was nominated for her second Oscar in 2013.
The Shanti Bhavan Children's Project is a U.S. 501(c)(3) and India 80-G non-profit organisation based in Bangalore Karnataka, India, that operates a pre-K-12 residential school in Baliganapalli, Tamil Nadu. The school annually enrolls 12 boys and 12 girls for its incoming pre-school class. Thereafter, students stay at the school year-round except for summer and winter breaks. Students attend Shanti Bhavan free of charge and are provided with nutritional meals, clothes, shelter, education, healthcare and emotional and mental support. Shanti Bhavan is accredited by the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), and administers the ICSE and ISC exams during students' 10th and 12th grades. After students' 12th grade, Shanti Bhavan also pays for their college education.
Andrew Rossi is an American filmmaker, known for directing and writing The Andy Warhol Diaries (2022).
Hemlock Grove is an American horror television series produced by Eli Roth and developed by Brian McGreevy and Lee Shipman. It is a production of Gaumont International Television. The series is based on McGreevy's 2012 novel of the same name. The series premiered on Netflix on April 19, 2013, with all 13 episodes made immediately available for online viewing.
Amy Ziering is an American film producer and director. Mostly known for her work in documentary films, she is a regular collaborator of director Kirby Dick; they co-directed 2002's Derrida and 2020's On the Record, with Ziering also producing several of Dick's films.
Lindsey Dryden is a British film director, producer and writer.
Lesley Chilcott is an American documentary film director and producer. Notable feature documentary films include Watson, Waiting for "Superman", CodeGirl, It Might Get Loud, and An Inconvenient Truth which won two Academy Awards. Chilcott is known for documentaries about social justice issues such as climate change, the environment, women's equality, and education. She directed the audience-favored Netflix docuseries, Arnold (2023), about the life of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a bodybuilder, movie star, and politician.
Unrest is a 2017 documentary film produced and directed by Jennifer Brea. The film tells the story of how Jennifer and her new husband faced an illness that struck Jennifer just before they married. Initially dismissed by doctors, she starts filming herself to document her illness and connects with others who are home- or bedbound with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.
Sabrina Schmidt Gordon is an American documentary filmmaker. She is known for producing and editing films on cultural and social issues. In 2018, she was invited to become a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).
Daughters of Destiny is a 2017 English-language original Netflix documentary series created by Oscar-winning filmmaker Vanessa Roth. It follows a group of disadvantaged children in rural India enrolled in the Shanti Bhavan residential school located in Tamil Nadu, India.
Smriti Mundhra is an American filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her production company, Meralta Films, specializes in documentary films and non-fiction content.
My Octopus Teacher is a 2020 Netflix Original documentary film directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed, which documents a year spent by filmmaker Craig Foster forging a relationship with a wild common octopus in a South African kelp forest. At the 93rd Academy Awards, it won the award for Best Documentary Feature.
Impact Partners is an American film production and television production company founded in 2007, by Dan Cogan and Geralyn Dreyfous. The company primarily produces documentary films focusing on social issues.
Pailin Wedel is a Thai-American photojournalist, film director and producer best known for directing, producing and co-writing the documentary Hope Frozen (2018), which was picked up for distribution through Netflix in 2020. She served as producer on Operation Thailand, a documentary series that explored Thailand's medical tourism industry, and as a director on 101 East, a weekly current affairs series created by Al Jazeera. Prior to her work in film and video journalism, Wedel created content for multiple publications, including The New York Times and The Washington Post. With her husband, she also founded 2050 Productions, a Bangkok-based documentary team, in 2016.