The People Behind the Films for 2015
The Sturgeon Queens
Director: Julie Cohen
The founder of BetterThanFiction Productions, Julie Cohen has directed and produced ten films and won three New York Emmys, including the 2014 award for Best Arts Program. Before starting BetterThanFiction, she was a longtime staff producer for NBC News. She graduated from Colgate and holds master’s degrees from Yale Law School and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she is an adjunct professor. Julie lives in Brooklyn with her husband Paul M. Barrett, senior feature writer for Bloomberg Businessweek and author of four nonfiction books, including Law of the Jungle.
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The Lady in Number 6
Director: Malcolm Clarke
Malcolm Clarke is an English film maker. Clarke and fellow producer Nicholas Reed received an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) for the 2013 film The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life. Clarke also won the Oscar in this category at the 61st Academy Awards for You Don’t Have to Die and was nominated in 2002 for Prisoner of Paradise in the documentary feature category.
Hitler’s Children
Director: Chanoch Ze’evi
Chanoch Ze’evi is a director and producer of documentary films for the television and documentary film industries. In fifteen years of filmmaking, Mr. Ze’evi has addressed issues of conflict, reconciliation, and the social and political circumstances that define identity. His films are intended to forge paths and build bridges between opposing groups and cultures.
The Wonders
Director: Avi Nesher
Avi Nesher‘s award winning films have played a major part in Israeli cinema’s rise to prominence during the last ten years. In 2010 Nesher wrote, directed and produced The Matchmaker which was hailed as the best movie of the year by several Israeli film critics. In 2007, Nesher’s Hasodot was hailed as “witty and wise, sensual and emotionally over powering – one of the best Israeli movies in recent years.” In 2005, Nesher directed the highly experimental political documentary Oriental about the Camp David Accords and won the “Spirit of Freedom” award at the Jerusalem Film Festival. “Brilliant and original” raved the Jerusalem Post “Avi Nesher is clearly Israel’s most innovative filmmaker.” Avi Nesher was born and raised in Ramat Gan, Israel. The child of a Romanian-born diplomat, and a mother who came from Russia.[2] In 1965, he moved with his family to the United States. He graduated high school at sixteen and studied international relations at Columbia University. In 1971, he returned to Israel and served in the IDF elite special forces unit Sayeret Matkal.
Quality Balls
Director: Barry Avrich
Barry Michael Avrich is a Canadian film director, film producer, playwright, author, marketing executive and arts philanthropist. Avrich’s film career has included critically acclaimed films about the entertainment business including The Last Mogul about film producer Lew Wasserman (2005), Glitter Palace about the Motion Picture Country Home (2005), and Guilty Pleasure about the Vanity Fair columnist and author Dominick Dunne (2004). Avrich also produced the Gemini-nominated television special Caesar and Cleopatra (2009) with Christopher Plummer.
Under the Same Sun
Director: Sameh Zoabi
Sameh Zoabi is a writer and director from Iksal, a small village in Israel. His feature debut, Man without a Cell Phone, was selected for the New Directors/New Films festival at MoMA and the Lincoln Center. His short film, “Be Quiet,” won third prize in the Cinéfondation Selection at the Cannes Film Festival. He has bachelor’s degrees in film studies and English literature from Tel Aviv University and attended the M.F.A. Film Program at Columbia on a merit scholarship.
