Jonathan Glazer Supporters
Actors Joaquin Phoenix and Elliott Gould and producer Joel Coen joined more than 150 Jewish professionals in Hollywood who have signed an open letter in support of writer and director Jonathan Glazer, who was widely denounced for sharing his perspective on the Israel-Gaza conflict at the Oscars last month.
The letter, addressing concerns of “silencing” dissent, was shared Friday with Variety and was signed by a plethora of renowned artists, among them directors Todd Haynes and Mike Leigh; actors David Cross, Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson; and writers Boots Riley and Tom Stoppard.
“We are Jewish artists, filmmakers, writers and creative professionals who support Jonathan Glazer’s statement from the 2024 Oscars,” the letter says, according to Variety. “We were alarmed to see some of our colleagues in the industry mischaracterize and denounce his remarks.”
“Their attacks on Glazer are a dangerous distraction from Israel’s escalating military campaign which has already killed over 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza and brought hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation,” the statement says.
Glazer, in his acceptance speech when the Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” won for best international feature film, said that he and his colleagues simply “refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation.”
“Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel of the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?” Glazer said as he read from a piece of paper while trembling.
Though he found support in the following days from screenwriter Tony Kushner, a fellow Jew who said the conflict “looks like ethnic cleansing to me,” Glazer was slammed by many others in Hollywood who suggested he had cruelly conflated Israel with Nazi Germany.
NOTE: This list is incomplete. A total of 151 people signed the letter.
The letter, addressing concerns of “silencing” dissent, was shared Friday with Variety and was signed by a plethora of renowned artists, among them directors Todd Haynes and Mike Leigh; actors David Cross, Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson; and writers Boots Riley and Tom Stoppard.
“We are Jewish artists, filmmakers, writers and creative professionals who support Jonathan Glazer’s statement from the 2024 Oscars,” the letter says, according to Variety. “We were alarmed to see some of our colleagues in the industry mischaracterize and denounce his remarks.”
“Their attacks on Glazer are a dangerous distraction from Israel’s escalating military campaign which has already killed over 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza and brought hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation,” the statement says.
Glazer, in his acceptance speech when the Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” won for best international feature film, said that he and his colleagues simply “refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation.”
“Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel of the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?” Glazer said as he read from a piece of paper while trembling.
Though he found support in the following days from screenwriter Tony Kushner, a fellow Jew who said the conflict “looks like ethnic cleansing to me,” Glazer was slammed by many others in Hollywood who suggested he had cruelly conflated Israel with Nazi Germany.
NOTE: This list is incomplete. A total of 151 people signed the letter.
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Jonathan first found fame for his revolutionary work on Radiohead's 'Street Spirit' and Jamiroquai's multi-MTV award winning 'Virtual Insanity' video.
In 1999 he directed the ground-breaking Guinness 'Surfer', which picked up 2 D&AD Black Pencils and the top spot at most of the other awards festivals that year. The film still heads many lists as one of the best commercials of all time. He has made iconic commercials for Stella Artois, Levis, Nike, Sony, Volkswagen, Channel 4, Wrangler, Apple and many others. His film for Alexander McQueen won a Grand Prix at the Ciclope Festival in Berlin.
In 2000 Jonathan directed Sexy Beast which was nominated for Best British Film by BAFTA. This was followed 4 years later with Birth, staring Nicole Kidman and Lauren Bacall. His 2014 film, Under The Skin stars Scarlett Johansson and is an adaptation of Michel Faber's 2000 novel of the same name. Under The Skin received 2 BAFTA nominations and won critical acclaim as a 'landmark in filmmaking'.
Later on, Jonathan directed work for the BBC in the form of 2019's 'The Fall', a short film influenced by Goya's 'The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters' and a hunting photograph of Donald Trump's two sons posing with a dead leopard; and 2020's Strasbourg 1518, a collaboration in isolation created during Covid, inspired by a unique plague striking inhabitants of the city who danced until their ultimate demise.- Actor
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Joaquin Phoenix was born Joaquin Rafael Bottom in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Arlyn (Dunetz) and John Bottom, and is the middle child in a brood of five. His parents, from the continental United States, were then serving as Children of God missionaries. His mother is from a Jewish family from New York, while his father, from California, is of mostly British Isles descent. As a youngster, Joaquin took his cues from older siblings River Phoenix and Rain Phoenix, changing his name to Leaf to match their earthier monikers. When the children were encouraged to develop their creative instincts, he followed their lead into acting. Younger sisters Liberty Phoenix and Summer Phoenix rounded out the talented troupe.
The family moved often, traveling through Central and South America (and adopting the surname "Phoenix" to celebrate their new beginnings) but, by the time Joaquin was age 6, they had more or less settled in the Los Angeles area. Arlyn found work as a secretary at NBC, and John turned his talents to landscaping. They eventually found an agent who was willing to represent all five children, and the younger generation dove into television work. Commercials for meat, milk, and junk food were off-limits (the kids were all raised as strict vegans), but they managed to find plenty of work pushing other products. Joaquin's first real acting gig was a guest appearance on River's sitcom, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1982).
He worked with his brother again on the afterschool special Backwards: The Riddle of Dyslexia (1984), then struck out on his own in other made-for-TV productions. He made his big-screen debut as the youngest crew member in the interstellar romp SpaceCamp (1986), then won his first starring turn in the Cold War-era drama Russkies (1987). In the late '80s, the Phoenix clan decided to pull up stakes and relocate again--this time to Florida. River's film career had enough momentum to sustain the move, but Joaquin wasn't sure what lay in store for him in the Sunshine State. As it happened, Universal Pictures had just opened a new studio in the area and he was cast almost immediately as an angst-ridden adolescent in Parenthood (1989). His performance was very well-received, but Joaquin decided to withdraw from acting for a while--he was frustrated with the dearth of interesting roles for actors his age, and he wanted to see more of the world.
His parents were in the process of separating, so he struck out for Mexico with his father. Joaquin returned to the public eye three years later under tragic circumstances. On October 31, 1993, he was at The Viper Room (a Los Angeles nightclub partly-owned by Johnny Depp) when his brother River collapsed from a drug overdose and later died. Joaquin made the call to 911, which was rebroadcast on radio and television the world over. Months later, at the insistence of friends and colleagues, Joaquin began reading through scripts again, but he was reluctant to re-enter the acting life until he found just the right part. He finally signed up to work with Gus Van Sant (who had directed River in My Own Private Idaho (1991) and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993)) to star as Nicole Kidman's obsessive devotee in To Die For (1995). The performance made Joaquin (who had dropped Leaf and reverted to his birth name) a critics' darling in his own right.
His follow-up turn in Inventing the Abbotts (1997) scored more critical kudos and, perhaps more importantly, introduced him to his one-time fiancée Liv Tyler. (The pair dated for almost three years.) He returned to the big screen later that year with a supporting role in Oliver Stone's U Turn (1997), then played a locked-up drug scapegoat in Return to Paradise (1998). He and "Paradise" co-star Vince Vaughn re-teamed almost immediately for the small-town murder caper Clay Pigeons (1998), which Joaquin followed with a turn as a porn store clerk in 8MM (1999). The film that confirmed Phoenix as a star was the historical epic Gladiator (2000). The Roman epic cast him as the selfish, paranoid young emperor Commodus opposite Russell Crowe's swarthy hero. Determined to make his character as real as possible, Phoenix gained weight and cultivated a pasty complexion during the shoot. He received international attention and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for that role.
Later that year, he appeared in two indies, playing a dock worker in The Yards (2000) (which he counts among his favorite experiences--and one of the only films of his that he can sit through) and the priest in charge of the Marquis de Sade's asylum in Quills (2000). He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor as the legendary musician Johnny Cash in the biography Walk the Line (2005). He also recorded an album, the film's soundtrack, for which he received the Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media.- Actor
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- Soundtrack
Elliott Gould is an American actor known for his roles in M*A*S*H (1970), his Oscar-nominated performance in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), and more recently, his portrayal of old-time con artist Reuben Tishkoff in Ocean's Eleven (2001), Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007). Gould was born Elliott Goldstein on August 29, 1938 in Brooklyn, NY, to Lucille (Raver), who sold artificial flowers, and Bernard Goldstein, a textiles buyer in the garment industry. His family were Jewish immigrants (from Romania, Belarus, and Russia).
Gould's portrayal of Trapper John in Robert Altman's M*A*S*H (1970) marked the beginning of perhaps the most prolific period of his career, highlighted by such roles as Philip Marlowe in Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973) and Robert Caulfield in Capricorn One (1977).
On television Gould has the distinction of having hosted Saturday Night Live (1975) six times and helmed E/R (1984), a situation comedy set in Chicago about a divorced physician working in an emergency room, which aired for one season. He also co-starred in the series Nothing Is Easy (1986) about a couple raising an adopted Chinese boy.
Gould appeared regularly on television and in film throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, including cameos in The Muppet Movie (1979) and The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984). His most prominent recent television role was a recurring part on Friends (1994), on which he played Monica and Ross Geller's father Jack. More recently he voiced the character of Mr. Stoppable on the Disney Channel animated series Kim Possible (2002). In film Gould received critical acclaim for his portrayal of an older mobster in Warren Beatty's Bugsy (1991), and make a noteworthy appearance in American History X (1998). His next major TV role will be in Showtime's drama Ray Donovan (2013) starring Liev Schreiber.
Gould has been married three times, twice to Jennifer Bogart, and once to Barbra Streisand. He has three children.- Director
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Todd Haynes was always interested in art, and made amateur movies and painted while he was still a child. He attended Brown university and majored in art and semiotics. After he graduated he moved to New York City and made the controversial short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987). The movie uses dolls instead of actors to tell the the story of the late Karen Carpenter. The movie was a success at several film festivals, and because of a lawsuit by Richard Carpenter (over musical rights) is very hard to see but it is a true classic for bootleg video buyers. His first feature, Poison (1991) was even more controversial. The film was attacked by conservatives and Christians who said it was pornographic, but it won the Grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival. It is now considered a seminal work of the new queer cinema. His short film Dottie Gets Spanked (1993) was aired on PBS. His next feature film Safe (1995) told the story of a woman played by his good friend, Julianne Moore, suffering from a breakdown caused by a mysterious illness. Many thought the film was a metaphor of the Aids virus. The movie was considered to be an outstanding work and one of the best films of the year. In Velvet Goldmine (1998), starring Christian Bale and Ewan McGregor, he combines the visual style of 60s/70s art films and his love for glam rock music to tell the story of a fictional rock star's rise and fall. Far from Heaven (2002), set in the 1950s and starring Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid, is about a Connecticut housewife who discovers that her husband is gay, and has an affair with her black gardener, played by Dennis Haysbert. The film was a critical and box office success, garnering four Academy Awards. It was hailed as a breakthrough for independent film, and brought Haynes mainstream recognition. With I'm Not There (2007), Haynes returned to the theme of musical legend bio, portraying Bob Dylan via seven fictive characters played by six different actors. The film brought him critical claim, with special attention to the casting of Cate Blanchett as arguably the most convincing of the Dylan characters, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. In 2011, Haynes directed Mildred Pierce, a five-hour miniseries for HBO starring Kate Winslet in the title role. His new feature film Carol (2015) with Cate Blanchett premiered at the Cannes International Festival 2015 to rave reviews and won Best Actress for Rooney Mara.- Director
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Mike Leigh is an English film and theatre director, screenwriter and playwright. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and further at the Camberwell School of Art, the Central School of Art and Design and the London School of Film Technique. He began his career as a theatre director and playwright in the mid-1960s, before transitioning to making televised plays and films for BBC Television in the 1970s and '80s. Leigh is known for his lengthy rehearsal and improvisation techniques with actors to build characters and narrative for his films. His purpose is to capture reality and present "emotional, subjective, intuitive, instinctive, vulnerable films." His films and stage plays, according to critic Michael Coveney, "comprise a distinctive, homogenous body of work which stands comparison with anyone's in the British theatre and cinema over the same period."
Leigh's most notable works include the black comedy-drama Naked (1993), for which he won the Best Director Award at Cannes, the Oscar-nominated, BAFTA- and Palme d'Or-winning drama Secrets & Lies (1996), the Golden Lion-winning working-class drama Vera Drake (2004), and the Palme d'Or-nominated biopic Mr. Turner (2014). Other well-known films include the comedy-dramas Life Is Sweet (1990) Meantime (1983) and Career Girls (1997), the Gilbert and Sullivan biographical film Topsy-Turvy (1999) and the bleak working-class drama All or Nothing (2002). He won great success with American audiences with the female led films, Vera Drake (2004) starring Imelda Staunton, Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) with Sally Hawkins, the family drama Another Year (2010), and the historical drama Peterloo (2018). His stage plays include Smelling A Rat, It's A Great Big Shame, Greek Tragedy, Goose-Pimples, Ecstasy and Abigail's Party.
Leigh has helped to create stars - Liz Smith in Hard Labour, Alison Steadman in Abigail's Party, Brenda Blethyn in Grown-Ups, Antony Sher in Goose-Pimples, Gary Oldman and Tim Roth in Meantime, Jane Horrocks in Life is Sweet, David Thewlis in Naked - and remarked that the list of actors who have worked with him over the years - including Paul Jesson, Phil Daniels, Lindsay Duncan, Lesley Sharp, Kathy Burke, Stephen Rea, Julie Walters - "comprises an impressive, almost representative, nucleus of outstanding British acting talent." His aesthetic has been compared to the sensibility of the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu and the Italian Federico Fellini. Ian Buruma, writing in The New York Review of Books in January 1994, commented: "It is hard to get on a London bus or listen to the people at the next table in a cafeteria without thinking of Mike Leigh. Like other original artists, he has staked out his own territory. Leigh's London is as distinctive as Fellini's Rome or Ozu's Tokyo."
Leigh was born to Phyllis Pauline (née Cousin) and Alfred Abraham Leigh, a doctor. Leigh was born at Brocket Hall in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, which was at that time a maternity home. His mother, in her confinement, went to stay with her parents in Hertfordshire for comfort and support while her husband was serving as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Leigh was brought up in the Broughton area of Salford, Lancashire. He attended North Grecian Street Junior School. He is from a Jewish family; his paternal grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants who settled in Manchester. The family name, originally Lieberman, had been anglicised in 1939 "for obvious reasons". When the war ended, Leigh's father began his career as a general practitioner in Higher Broughton, "the epicentre of Leigh's youngest years and the area memorialised in Hard Labour." Leigh went to Salford Grammar School, as did the director Les Blair, his friend, who produced Leigh's first feature film Bleak Moments (1971). There was a strong tradition of drama in the all-boys school, and an English master, Mr Nutter, supplied the library with newly published plays.
Outside school Leigh thrived in the Manchester branch of Labour Zionist youth movement Habonim. In the late 1950s he attended summer camps and winter activities over the Christmas break all-round the country. Throughout this time the most important part of his artistic consumption was cinema, although this was supplemented by his discovery of Picasso, Surrealism, The Goon Show, and even family visits to the Hallé Orchestra and the D'Oyly Carte. His father, however, was deeply opposed to the idea that Leigh might become an artist or an actor. He forbade him his frequent habit of sketching visitors who came to the house and regarded him as a problem child because of his creative interests. In 1960, "to his utter astonishment", he won a scholarship to RADA. Initially trained as an actor at RADA, Leigh started to hone his directing skills at East 15 Acting School where he met the actress, Alison Steadman.
Leigh responded negatively to RADA's agenda, found himself being taught how to "laugh, cry and snog" for weekly rep purposes and so became a sullen student. He later attended Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (in 1963), the Central School of Art and Design and the London School of Film Technique on Charlotte Street. When he had arrived in London, one of the first films he had seen was Shadows (1959), an improvised film by John Cassavetes, in which a cast of unknowns was observed 'living, loving and bickering' on the streets of New York and Leigh had "felt it might be possible to create complete plays from scratch with a group of actors." Other influences from this time included Harold Pinter's The Caretaker-"Leigh was mesmerised by the play and the (Arts Theatre) production"- Samuel Beckett, whose novels he read avidly, and the writing of Flann O'Brien, whose "tragi-comedy" Leigh found particularly appealing. Influential and important productions he saw in this period included Beckett's Endgame, Peter Brook's King Lear and in 1965 Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade, a production developed through improvisations, the actors having based their characterisations on people they had visited in a mental hospital. The visual worlds of Ronald Searle, George Grosz, Picasso, and William Hogarth exerted another kind of influence. He played small roles in several British films in the early 1960s, (West 11, Two Left Feet) and played a young deaf-mute, interrogated by Rupert Davies, in the BBC Television series Maigret. In 1964-65, he collaborated with David Halliwell, and designed and directed the first production of Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Eunuchs at the Unity Theatre.
Leigh has been described as "a gifted cartoonist ... a northerner who came south, slightly chippy, fiercely proud (and critical) of his roots and Jewish background; and he is a child of the 1960s and of the explosion of interest in the European cinema and the possibilities of television."
Leigh has cited Jean Renoir and Satyajit Ray among his favourite film makers. In addition to those two, in an interview recorded at the National Film Theatre at the BFI on 17 March 1991; Leigh also cited Frank Capra, Fritz Lang, Yasujiro Ozu and even Jean-Luc Godard, "...until the late 60s." When pressed for British influences, in that interview, he referred to the Ealing comedies "...despite their unconsciously patronizing way of portraying working-class people" and the early 60s British New Wave films. When asked for his favorite comedies, he replied, One, Two, Three, La règle du jeu and "any Keaton". The critic David Thomson has written that, with the camera work in his films characterised by 'a detached, medical watchfulness', Leigh's aesthetic may justly be compared to the sensibility of the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. Michael Coveney: "The cramped domestic interiors of Ozu find many echoes in Leigh's scenes on stairways and in corridors and on landings, especially in Grown-Ups, Meantime and Naked. And two wonderful little episodes in Ozu's Tokyo Story, in a hairdressing salon and a bar, must have been in Leigh's subconscious memory when he made The Short and Curlie's (1987), one of his most devastatingly funny pieces of work and the pub scene in Life is Sweet..."- Actor
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David Cross is an American actor, writer and comedian who is known for playing Tobias Fünke from Arrested Development, Minion from Megamind, Crane from Kung Fu Panda, Ian Hawke from Alvin and the Chipmunks, Yivo from Futurama and Happy Time Harry from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. He also acted in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Men in Black, Curious George and Halo 2.- Actress
- Producer
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Ilana Glazer was born on 12 April 1987 in Long Island, New York, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Broad City (2014), Rough Night (2017) and Broad City (2010). She has been married to David Rooklin since 25 February 2017.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Abbi Jacobson is an American comedian, actress, writer, and illustrator. She is best known for co-creating and co-starring in the Comedy Central series Broad City (2014) alongside Ilana Glazer, which was based on a web series of the same name that the two have created three years prior. Jacobson is also known for voicing Katie Mitchell in The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021) and Princess Bean in Disenchantment (2018), and would later go on to co-create and star in the series A League of Their Own (2022), which was based on the 1992 film of the same name.- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Joel Daniel Coen is an American filmmaker who regularly collaborates with his younger brother Ethan. They made Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, Inside Llewyn Davis, Hail Caesar and other projects. Joel married actress Frances McDormand in 1984 and had an adopted son.- Writer
- Script and Continuity Department
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Tom Stoppard was born on 3 July 1937 in Zlín, Czechoslovakia [now in Czech Republic]. He is a writer and producer, known for Shakespeare in Love (1998), Brazil (1985) and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990). He has been married to Sabrina Guinness since 2014. He was previously married to Miriam Stoppard and Jose Ingle.- Writer
- Director
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Boots Riley was born on 1 April 1971 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He is a writer and director, known for Sorry to Bother You (2018), I'm a Virgo (2023) and The Losers (2010).- Actress
- Location Management
- Soundtrack
Chloe Fineman returns to "Saturday Night Live," for her fifth season as a cast member.
Fineman has been entertaining viewers with her standout impressions of Drew Barrymore, Britney Spears, Nicole Kidman, Timothée Chalamet and more. Glamour raved "Chloe Fineman Can Impersonate Anyone" and the Washington Post called Fineman "The Comedian We Need Right Now". She was also honored in Hollywood Reporter's Next Gen List and Variety's New York Impact Report. Her Instagram @Chloeiscrazy has been a fan favorite for many years.
Chloe made her film debut in the "Father of the Bride" remake for HBO, followed by Paramount's "Babylon" and Netflix's "White Noise" from Noah Baumbach. She will co-star Francis Ford Coppola's upcoming drama, "Megalopolis" as well as Sony's "Ex Friends Wedding".
Her TV credits include "Big Mouth," (Netflix) "Search Party," (HBOMax) "Dickinson," (Apple TV) "Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens," (Comedy Central) "High Fidelity" (Hulu) and the new "Twisted Metal" (Peacock).
Fineman graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts with Honors and is from Berkeley, Calif.- Actress
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Mary Debra Winger was born May 16, 1955 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Ruth (Felder), an office manager, and Robert Jack Winger, a meat packer. She is from a Jewish family (originally from Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire). Her maternal grandparents called her Mary, while her parents called her Debra (her father named her Debra after his favorite actress, Debra Paget). The family moved to California when Debra was five. She fell in love with acting in high school but kept it a secret from her family. She was a precocious teenager, having graduated high school at an early age of 15. She enrolled in college, majoring in criminology. She worked part-time in the local amusement park when she got thrown from a truck and suffered serious injuries and went temporarily blind for several months. She was in the hospital when she vowed to pursue her passion for acting.
After she recovered, she abandoned college and studied acting. Like any struggling actor, she did commercials and guest-starred on 70s TV shows like Task Force: Part I (1976) and Wonder Woman (1975), where she performed as Diana's little sister, Wonder Girl. She also made her feature film debut in the embarrassing soft-core porn film, Slumber Party '57 (1976). (Years later on Inside the Actors Studio (1994), host James Lipton asked her to name her first film, and she refused to answer him.) Her next two films, French Postcards (1979) and Thank God It's Friday (1978), did absolutely nothing for her career. When Sissy Spacek said no to playing the character Sissy in Urban Cowboy (1980), almost every young actress in Hollywood pursued the role. Debra won the role over a then-unknown Michelle Pfeiffer and gave a star-making performance as John Travolta's wife. Her handling of the mechanical bull made her a new kind of sex symbol. She would always remain grateful to her director James Bridges for threatening to quit the film if the studio didn't cast her. However, she followed it up with a flop, Cannery Row (1982). But, she became part of one of the top-grossing films of all time by providing her deep, throaty voice to the title character of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) as a favor to the film's director Steven Spielberg (Note: IMDB cast list for E.T. indicates Pat Welsh as the voice for that character.). She also appeared in the film for a few seconds in the Halloween scene, where she is wearing a zombie mask and carrying a poodle. She received her first Academy Award nomination as Best Actress for the huge hit, An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), where her on-screen love scenes with Richard Gere became just as legendary as her off-screen fights with him and with director Taylor Hackford.
Debra's reputation as a great talent, as well as her reputation as a difficult actress grew with her next film, Terms of Endearment (1983), which not only earned her a second Oscar nomination as Best Actress but also won the Best Picture as well. She also earned the Best Actress Award from the National Society of Film Critics. Debra was at the top of her game and was the most sought-after actress in Hollywood, but she turned down quality roles and lucrative offers for three years. Some speculated that the reason was her romantic involvement with Bob Kerrey, then-governor of Nebraska, while others have stated it was her back problems. Whatever her reasons were, her career lost its heat. Her long-delayed film Mike's Murder (1984), reuniting her with her "Urban Cowboy" director James Bridges, didn't help matters either when it became a critical and financial flop. Debra tried to revive her career by starring in the big-budget comedy Legal Eagles (1986), but she disliked the film so much that she publicly stated that the director, Ivan Reitman, was one of the two worst directors she worked with, the other director being Taylor Hackford (An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)). She also walked out on her agency, CAA, but returned several years later.
Her personal life made headlines when she left Bob Kerrey and eloped with Oscar-winning actor Timothy Hutton in 1986. In 1987, she gave birth to their son, Noah Hutton. She also starred in Black Widow (1987), which wasn't a hit, and acted alongside Hutton as a male angel in Made in Heaven (1987) which flopped. She followed that up by starring in another flop, Betrayed (1988), which featured a fleeting cameo by Hutton. She separated from Hutton in 1988 and they divorced in 1990, at which time she had two more bombs, Everybody Wins (1990) and The Sheltering Sky (1990). However, she relished the experience on The Sheltering Sky (1990) so much that she stayed in the Sahara desert long after filming wrapped. She came back to US and filmed a Steve Martin vehicle, Leap of Faith (1992), which did nothing for her career. But, she found love on the set of her next film, Wilder Napalm (1993) when she co-starred opposite Arliss Howard, who became her next husband. The film flopped but their marriage lasted. She received good notices for A Dangerous Woman (1993), but it was Shadowlands (1993) which finally brought her renewed respectability and her third Academy Award nomination as Best Actress. She followed that up with a forgettable comedy, Forget Paris (1995). Then, she signed to do "Divine Rapture" with Marlon Brando and Johnny Depp in a small village in Ireland, but two weeks into filming, financing fell apart, and the film was never completed. Winger was never paid for her work, and neither were the poor villagers, and Winger said she was devastated for them. Now 40, Debra felt that there were no good roles for her and she concentrated on motherhood by having a second son, Babe Howard, in 1997. Her six-year absence from films inspired a documentary by Rosanna Arquette titled Searching for Debra Winger (2002), which is about sexism and ageism in Hollywood. In 2001, she returned to acting in her husband's film, Big Bad Love (2001), which she also co-produced. It renewed her love for acting, and she has ventured out into television as well by earning her first Emmy nomination as Best Actress for Dawn Anna (2005), directed by her husband. In 2008, she wrote a well-written book, based on her personal recollections, titled "Undiscovered". And she followed that up by winning rave reviews as Anne Hathaway's mother in Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married (2008). However, it wasn't enough to reignite her feature film career, so she ventured towards television in 2010 with a guest-starring role on "Law and Order" titled Boy on Fire (2010), to a seven-episode stint on In Treatment (2008), to a two-part miniseries The Red Tent (2014), to a regular role on The Ranch (2016) . Her television exposure reignited her feature film career, and she was cast in her first romantic lead in 22 years in The Lovers (2017). And she had also mellowed with age, presenting an award to Richard Gere in 2011 and saying kind things about director Taylor Hackford in 2017, after having fought with both of them during An Officer and a Gentleman (1982). Nobody can deny that Debra Winger is one of the best American actresses ever. Her fans hope that Hollywood will finally reward her talent with a long-overdue Academy Award.- Director
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Lenny Abrahamson was born in Dublin in 1966. He studied physics and philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. While at university he directed short videos with the Trinity Video Society, which he co-founded with Ed Guiney. He graduated in 1991 with first class honours (gold medal). His first short film, 3 Joes, won the Best European Short Film Award at the 1991 Cork Film Festival and the Organiser's Award at the 1992 Oberhausen Short Film Festival. He directed numerous commercials for television in Ireland, the UK and worldwide before taking the helm on his first feature film, Adam & Paul, a stylized downbeat comedy written by Mark O'Halloran and released in 2004. Adam and Paul won the Best First Feature award at the 2004 Galway Film Fleadh and the Grand Prix at the 2005 Sofia International Film Festival. His second feature film, Garage, another collaboration with writer Mark O' Halloran, was selected for Director's Fortnight at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and won the CICAE Art and Essai award. The film also won the awards for Best Film, Best Director, Best Script and Best Actor at the 2008 Irish Film and Television Awards (IFTAs). Lenny has also directed for television: his four one-hour TV films for RTE, Prosperity, also won the Best Director for TV award 2008 Irish Film and Television Awards. What Richard Did, his third feature, was released in 2012 to critical acclaim. The film, written by Malcolm Campbell, presents a stark portrait of a privileged Dublin teen whose world unravels with one summer night. What Richard Did premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival and was also selected for the 2012 BFI London Film Festival. Lenny's fourth feature, Frank, a comedy about a young wannabe musician starring Michael Fassbender and Domhnall Gleeson, will be shooting in Winter 2012.- Actress
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Rain Phoenix is the second child and first daughter born to Arlyn and John Bottom. At a young age, she and her brother River Phoenix were singing on the streets of South America for money for their growing family. As the years carried on, Rain became a big sister to brother, Joaquin, and sister, Liberty. When Arlyn was pregnant with Rain's youngest sister, Summer, the Bottom family were moving back to the United States and changed their name to 'Phoenix', to commemorate their new beginning. With a love of nature and animals, the Phoenixes decided to become vegans. A short while later, all five talented Phoenix children were signed to agent Iris Burton.
Over the years, Rain has starred along celebrities like Julia Stiles, Josh Hartnett and Uma Thurman. Her love of music has lead her to appear in such bands as Aleka's Attic, whom her brother River was also in, The Causey Way with her sister Summer and her band, The Paper Cranes with her husband, Michael Tubbs. She also toured with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers as a backup singer during their 'One Hot Minute' tour in 1996. A good friend of Michael Stipe, they have collaborated together on many projects (including the soundtrack to Happiness, and several REM songs).- Producer
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Amy Berg was born in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is known for Deliver Us from Evil (2006), West of Memphis (2012) and Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015).- Actress
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Hari Nef was born on 21 October 1992 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Barbie (2023), Assassination Nation (2018) and Transparent (2014).- Producer
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James Schamus is an American film producer, director and screenwriter who is known for his collaborations with Taiwanese film director Ang Lee. He wrote the award winning wuxia film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Eat Drink Man Woman, Pushing Hands, The Ice Storm, the cult classic Marvel film Hulk, Taking Woodstock and Lust, Caution. He is the co-founder of the Good Machine production company.- Actress
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Kate Berlant is an actress, stand-up comedian, and writer who was recently profiled by The New York Times as a "magnetic improvisational comic" at the forefront of experimental comedy. Kate was named a New Face at the 2014 Montreal Comedy Festival and was one of Comedy Central's Top Ten Comics to Watch in 2013. She has performed in festivals such as SXSW, the New York Comedy Festival, Bridgetown Comedy Festival, Moontower, San Francisco Sketchfest, and the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival. She was recently named by Splitsider as one of the Top 10 Up-And-Coming Comedians and was named by Time Out New York as one of the "Three Comics to Watch" in 2012. Kate was commissioned by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles to create material for their online channel and was a featured performer on IFC's "Comedy Drop." She just wrapped a pilot for Comedy Central and for TruTV. Kate recently finished an international tour opening for musician Father John Misty and a national tour with musician Lo-Fang. She has been featured in Rookie Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Los Angeles Magazine.- Director
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Nicole Holofcener was born on 22 March 1960 in New York City, New York, USA. She is a director and writer, known for Enough Said (2013), Friends with Money (2006) and Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018). She was previously married to Benjamin Allanoff.- Director
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Ira Sachs was born on 21 November 1965 in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. He is a director and writer, known for Keep the Lights On (2012), Passages (2023) and Little Men (2016).- Tavi Gevinson was born on 21 April 1996 in Oak Park, Illinois, USA. She is an actress, known for Enough Said (2013), Person to Person (2017) and Scream Queens (2015).
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American character actor and playwright Wallace Shawn has one of those fun, delightfully mischievously gnomish faces made for entertaining. Though he got out of the acting starting gate rather late, he quickly excelled film and TV while managing to turn himself into comedy egghead or loser types. Woody Allen's slightly threatened character in the movie Manhattan (1979) amusingly describes Wallace's benign gent as "a homunculus", which may be a pretty fair description of this predominantly bald, wan, pucker-mouthed, butterball-framed, slightly lisping gent. Shawn made his movie debut at age 36 in Allen's heralded classic in a brief but telling scene as Diane Keaton's ex-husband.
The 5'2" Jewish actor was born Wallace Michael Shawn into privilege on November 12, 1943 in New York City, as the son of Cecille (Lyon) (1906-2005), a journalist, and William Shawn (1907-1992), renowned and long-time editor of The New Yorker. His brother, Allen Shawn, went on to become a composer. Wallace was educated at both Harvard University, where he studied history, and Magdalen College, Oxford. Wallace initially taught English in India on a Fulbright scholarship, and then English, Latin and drama back in New York. However, a keen interest in writing and acting soon compelled him to leave his cushy position and pursue a stage career as both playwright and actor.
During his distinguished career, Wallace churned out several plays. "Our Late Night", the first of his works to be performed, was awarded an off-Broadway Obie in 1975. This was followed by "A Thought in Three Parts" (1976);, "The Mandrake" (1977) (which he translated from the original Italian and made his acting debut), "Marie and Bruce" (1979), "Aunt Dan and Lemon" (1985) and "The Fever," for which he received his second Obie for "Best New Play" during the 1990-91 season.
A popular supporting player of comedy and the occasional drama, Shawn's assorted kooks, creeps, brainiacs and schmucks possessed both endearing and unappetizing qualities. He earned his best early notices partnered with theatre director/actor Andre Gregory in the unique Louis Malle-directed film My Dinner with Andre (1981). Shawn co-wrote the improvisatory, humanistic piece with brother Allan as the composer. Shawn and Gregory would collaborate again for Malle in another superb, original-concept film Vanya on 42nd Street (1994).
Among Shawn's offbeat films have been Bruce Paltrow's A Little Sex (1982); James Ivory's The Bostonians (1984); Stephen Frears' Prick Up Your Ears (1987); Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride (1987); Alan Rudolph's The Moderns (1988) and Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994); and Paul Bartel's Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989). He also appeared in several other Woody Allen offerings including Radio Days (1987), Shadows and Fog (1991), The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), Melinda and Melinda (2004) and the title role in Rifkin's Festival (2020).
Since the 1990s, he has lent his vocal talents to a considerable number of animated pictures including A Goofy Movie (1995), Toy Story (1995) (and its sequels), The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story (1998), The Incredibles (2004), Chicken Little (2005), Happily N'Ever After (2006), Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (2010) and Animal Crackers (2017). TV voices have included The Pink Panther (1993), The Lionhearts (1998), Family Guy (1999), Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness (2011), The Stinky & Dirty Show (2015) and The Bug Diaries (2019).
Millennium films graced with Shawn's participation include Southland Tales (2006), Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (2008), Jack and the Beanstalk (2009), The Speed of Thought (2011) and Vamps (2012). He co-starred as Halvard Solness and wrote the screen adaptation for Ibsen's classic play A Master Builder (2013) co-starring Julie Hagerty, and went on to appear in Don Peyote (2014), Maggie's Plan (2015), Robo-Dog (2015), Drawing Home (2016), Another Kind of Wedding (2017), Book Club (2018) and Marriage Story (2019).
Over the decades, Shawn has scurried about effortlessly with a number of television guest appearances including "Taxi," "Homicide: Life on the Streets," "Ally McBeal," "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," "Sex and the City," "Desperate Housewives," "The Daily Show," "The 7D," "Life in Pieces," "The Good Fight," "Mr. Robot" and "Search Party. He has also drummed up a few recurring roles for himself in the process, including The Cosby Show (1984), Murphy Brown (1988), Clueless (1996) (based on the hit film Clueless (1995), revisiting his teacher role), Murphy Brown (1988), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993), Crossing Jordan (2001), The L Word (2004), Gossip Girl (2007), The Good Wife (2009), Mozart in the Jungle (2014), and, more recently, as Dr. Sturgis in the comedy Young Sheldon (2017).- Director
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Emma Seligman was born on 3 May 1995 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is a director and writer, known for Shiva Baby (2020), Bottoms (2023) and Shiva Baby (2018).- Actress
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Kirke was born in London, and raised in New York City from the age of five. Her father, Simon Kirke, is the former drummer of the rock bands Bad Company and Free. Her mother, Lorraine (née Dellal) Kirke, owns Geminola, a vintage boutique in New York City that supplied a number of outfits for the television series Sex and the City (1998).
Her father is of English and Scottish descent. Her maternal grandfather, Jack Dellal, was a British businessman of Iraqi Jewish descent, and Kirke's maternal grandmother was Israeli. Kirke has two sisters, Jemima Kirke and Domino Kirke. She is a cousin of curator Alexander Dellal and model Alice Dellal.
Kirke graduated from Bard College in 2012.- Director
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Janicza Bravo has spent half her life in Panama and half in Brooklyn. She studied directing and design for theatre at New York University's Playwrights Horizons Theater School. She has mounted plays in New York, Los Angeles, and Madrid. Her first short, Eat, premiered at SXSW. Her last short, Gregory Go Boom, played at the Sundance Film Festival.- David is the Senior Film Critic of IndieWire. Previously, he worked as a Staff Writer at Rolling Stone, the Associate Film Editor of Time Out New York, the Editor-at-Large of Little White Lies Magazine, and the Senior Editor of Film.com. As a freelancer writer, he has contributed to Slate, Vanity Fair, the Guardian, the Dissolve, the A.V. Club, and other outlets. He co-hosts the Fighting in the War Room podcast, and his annual video countdowns of the year's best films have been viewed more than 2 million times. He lives in Brooklyn.IndieWire critic?
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Unlike virtually all his contemporaries, Ken Loach has never succumbed to the siren call of Hollywood, and it's virtually impossible to imagine his particular brand of British socialist realism translating well to that context.
After studying law at St. Peter's College, Oxford, he branched out into the theater, performing with a touring repertory company. This led to television, where in alliance with producer Tony Garnett he produced a series of docudramas, most notably the devastating "Cathy Come Home" episode of The Wednesday Play (1964), whose impact was so massive that it led directly to a change in the homeless laws.
He made his feature debut Poor Cow (1967) the following year, and with Kes (1969), he produced what is now acclaimed as one of the finest films ever made in Britain. However, the following two decades saw his career in the doldrums with his films poorly distributed (despite the obvious quality of work such as The Gamekeeper (1968) and Looks and Smiles (1981)) and his TV work in some cases never broadcast (most notoriously, his documentaries on the 1984 miners' strike).
He made a spectacular comeback in the 1990s, with a series of award-winning films firmly establishing him in the pantheon of great European directors - his films have always been more popular in mainland Europe than in his native country or the US (where Riff-Raff (1991) was shown with subtitles because of the wide range of dialects). Hidden Agenda (1990) won the Special Jury Prize at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival; Riff-Raff (1991) won the Felix award for Best European Film of 1992; Raining Stones (1993) won the Cannes Special Jury Prize for 1993, and Land and Freedom (1995) won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival - and was a substantial box-office hit in Spain where it sparked intense debate about its subject matter. This needless to say, was one of the reasons that Loach made the film!- Cinematographer
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Todd Banhazl is known for The Strange Ones (2017).- Actress
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Ariela Barer was born on 14 October 1998 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress and writer, known for How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022), Runaways (2017) and Oddities (2023).- Director
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Abner Benaim is known for Plaza Catedral (2021), Ruben Blades Is Not My Name (2018) and Chance (2009).- Producer
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Margaret Brown is known for The Order of Myths (2008), Descendant (2022) and 99 Threadwaxing (1998).- Producer
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Dan Bucatinsky was born in New York City, New York, USA to Argentinian parents, Julio and Myriam. He is of Latin and Jewish descent. He is an Emmy winning actor, known for The Baker and the Beauty (2020), Second Act (2018) and Scandal (2012) and a producer of Who Do You Think You Are? (2010) and Web Therapy (2008) and 25 Words Or Less (2018). He has been married to filmmaker Don Roos since 2008. They have two children.- Director
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Simone Bitton was born in 1955 in Morocco. She is a director and writer, known for Mur (2004), L'attentat (2000) and Palestine: Story of A Land (1996).- Director
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Deborah Eisenberg was born on 20 November 1945 in Winnetka, Illinois, USA. She is an actress and writer, known for While We're Young (2014), Marie and Bruce (2004) and Let Them All Talk (2020).- Actor
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Jordan Firstman was born on 8 July 1991 in Long Island, New York, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Big Mouth (2017), Ms. Marvel (2022) and Search Party (2016).- Actress
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Frances Fisher began by apprenticing at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia. She spent 14 years based in New York City, playing leads in over 30 productions of plays by such noted writers as John Arden, Noël Coward, Emily Mann, Joe Orton, Sam Shepard, William Shakespeare, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Eudora Welty and Tennessee Williams. She won a Drama Logue Award - Best Ensemble for the American Premier of Caryl Churchill's "Three More Sleepless Nights", played in the American premier of Judith Thompson's "The Crackwalker" and originated roles in Elia Kazan's "The Chain" and Arthur Miller's last play "Finishing the Picture". Besides working with Kazan and Miller, some of Ms. Fisher's more interesting theater experiences were creating roles from two great works of literature: George Orwell's "1984" and Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". Ms. Fisher worked at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles alongside Annette Bening and Alfred Molina in Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard". Fisher starred in "Sexy Laundry" with Paul Ben-Victor at the Hayworth Theatre in Los Angeles. She studied with Stella Adler and became a lifetime member of the Actors Studio by actually "walking up the stairs" and auditioning for legendary acting teacher Lee Strasberg. Ms. Fisher recently completed The Host (2013), Love on the Run (2016), Red Wing (2013) and will work with Catherine Hardwicke in her new film Plush (2013) in August 2012. Ms. Fisher was honored for a Lifetime Achievement Award 2011 in her old hometown of the Pacific Palisades, California.- Actor
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Noah could be seen playing 'Kenny' in ABC's comedy The Real O'Neals (2016) which premiered in March 2016. He now stars on the show The Good Doctor (2017) as Dr. Asher Wolke.
Noah is most proud of his critically acclaimed work off- Broadway at theaters such as the Signature, Playwrights Horizons, MCC, The Vineyard, The Public, The Culture Project, The Flea, The Wild Project, New York Theater Workshop, the Barrow Street Theater, Rattlestick, Ensemble Studio Theater, and many others. He is a recipient of Audiofile Magazine's Earphones Award for his narration of Hollis Seamon's novel Somebody Up There Hates You. His other audiobook work includes Perks of Being a Wallflower, Matthew Quick's Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock, and more. Additional credits include the celebrated short films "Promiseland" and "Welcome to the Wayne".- Director
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Girl (little or teenage), woman, family, couple, friendship, emigration, class struggle, serious society subjects are terms that can be associated with the name of Sarah Gavron, one of the (too) few women directors in Great Britain.Via three major films "Brick Lane" (about the uprooting, integration and eventual return to the country of a young Bangladeshi woman), "Suffragette" (about the struggle of women in England for gender equality through the right to vote) and "Rocks" (the survival of a young Nigerian girl and her little brother of the Hackney abandoned by their mother), Sarah Gavron has imposed her universe, deeply rooted in reality and marked by an empathy devoid of any mawkishness.
Born on 20 April 1970, Gavron studied direction at the National Film and Television School. One of her teachers, and one of her major influences, was Stephen Frears. The shorts, TV films and feature films, whether fictions or documentaries, which she made between 2000 and 2020 earned her several well-deserved awards.- Natalie Gold was born in Miami, Florida, USA. Natalie is an actor, known for Succession (2018), Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) and The Leftovers (2014).
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Nan Goldin was born on 12 September 1953 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. She is an actress and director, known for All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022), I'll Be Your Mirror (1996) and High Art (1998).- Writer
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Josh Gondelman is known for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (2014), Desus & Mero (2019) and Ramsey Has a Time Machine (2014).- Actor
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Fred Hechinger was born on 2 December 1999 in New York. He is an actor and producer, known for News of the World (2020), The Pale Blue Eye (2022) and The Woman in the Window (2021).- Director
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Lee Hirsch was born and raised on Long Island, New York, and attended the Putney School in Vermont, Hampshire College and the New York Film Academy. He is the founder, director and producer of the Local Voices for Obama project, a series of ads featuring Obama supporters in small towns in swing states speaking candidly about their support of this candidate. Winner of Best Presidential Ad and Best Independent Expenditure at the 2009 Reed Awards, judged by political luminaries including George Stephanopolous, Joe Trippi and Christine Todd Whitman.
A documentary filmmaker, Lee Hirsch's debut feature film, Amandla! a Revolution in Four Part Harmony, chronicles the history of the South African anti-apartheid struggle through a celebration of its musical heroes. This film was released to acclaim, winning the Audience and Freedom of Expression Awards at the Sundance Film Festival, as well as one of the five Emmy awards it was nominated for, among many other honors. Financed by the Ford Foundation and HBO, Amandla! (which means power in Zulu) was theatrically released in the United States by Artisan/Lions Gate. The film has sold worldwide with additional cinema releases in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. An accompanying soundtrack was released on Dave Matthews' ATO record label. Recently, Hirsch directed and produced for the Discovery Channel's series, Next World, a multi-part series that examines what the world will look like in 30 years. Hirsch directed the episode "future metro" as well; he directed various segments throughout the series dealing with the future of fun, trains, automobiles and a variety of other subjects.
In 2007, Hirsch also directed and produced the History Channel special, Act of Honor. The program paints an intimate portrait of a Mexican-American family dealing with the tragic death of their son, Rafael Peralta, who threw himself on a live grenade and saved the lives of several Marines in his unit during the battle of Fallujah. Act of Honor traces Peralta's extraordinary journey from Tijuana, Mexico to San Diego to the streets of Iraq. A truly unique immigration and war story, the film has been applauded in reviews by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and other major papers. Hirsch is also an established director of music videos, his most recent being a narrative shot on location in Zanzibar for John Legend's song Show Me, which was nominated for a 2008 NAACP Image award. He is also the recipient of the Best Video of the Year award from the National Television and Video Association of South Africa for his work with Bongo Maffin.
He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.- Director
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Eliza Hittman was born on 1 January 1979 in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. She is a director and producer, known for Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), Beach Rats (2017) and It Felt Like Love (2013).- Producer
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Filmmaker Magazine rated her #1 in their "25 New Faces of Indie Film" in 2004!
She is a performance artist and published short story writer. Since becoming a filmmaker, her debut feature, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) has won several film awards.
She is the daughter of Lindy Hough and Richard Grossinger, writers and publishers who founded North Atlantic Books.- Cinematographer
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Sara Kiener is known for Obvious Child (2014), The Shawl (2020) and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021).- Director
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Alison Klayman was the youngest director named by the New York Times chief film critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis on their international list of 20 Directors to Watch. Alison's documentary work has been recognized with awards and box office success, and she also directs nonfiction series and commercials. Her debut feature "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry", about the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival where it was awarded a US Documentary Special Jury Prize for Spirit of Defiance. It had its international premiere at Berlinale and went on to be shortlisted for an Academy Award, nominated for two Emmys, and earn Alison a DGA Award nomination and an appearance on The Colbert Report among other honors. "Never Sorry" has now been translated into over 26 languages and had major theatrical releases around the world, including on over 200 screens with IFC Films in the United States. It was also one of the highest grossing films of 2012 directed by a woman.
Her newest documentary "The Brink" is distributed in the U.S. by Magnolia Pictures. In it she takes on former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, following him for over a year as he tries to promote his brand of extreme nationalism and unite the far-right anti-immigrant parties of Europe. After its Sundance premiere, Variety called the film "impeccably crafted...an engaging and enraging, disturbing and highly revealing movie." In his Critic's Pick review, A.O Scott wrote "it's a fast-moving, tightly packed, at times unnervingly entertaining documentary."
Alison's other films include the Netflix Original feature documentary "Take Your Pills" about the role of prescription stimulants in a hyper-competitive, overly medicated America. The BAFTA-nominated film was executive produced by Maria Shriver and had its world premiere at the 2018 SXSW Film Festival. She is also the director of "The 100 Years Show" about 103-year-old Cuban-American painter Carmen Herrera, who worked in obscurity for decades until finally receiving recognition late in life. The film was a festival favorite and five-time winner of "Best Documentary Short." It had a theatrical run at New York's Film Forum, and screened at the Whitney and other museums before being released worldwide on Netflix. She has also served as an executive producer on several award-winning films, including the Oscar-shortlisted documentaries "Hooligan Sparrow" and "On Her Shoulders."- Writer
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Naomi Klein was born on 8 May 1970 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She is a writer and producer, known for This Changes Everything (2015), The Take (2004) and The Shock Doctrine (2007). She is married to Avi Lewis.- Producer
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Pamela Koffler is known for Past Lives (2023), May December (2023) and Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001).- Actress
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Lisa Kron is a writer and performer whose work has been widely produced in New York, regionally, and internationally. She wrote the book and lyrics for musical Fun Home, with music by composer Jeanine Tesori, which won five 2015 Tony awards including Best Musical and was finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Lisa's other plays include In The Wake, Well, and the Obie Award winning 2.5 Minute Ride. As an actor she received a Tony award nomination for her performance in Well and a Lortel Award for her turn as Mrs. Mi-Tzu and Mrs. Yang in the Foundry Theater's acclaimed production of Good Person of Szechuan. She is the recipient of Guggenheim, Sundance and MacDowell fellowships, a Doris Duke Performing Artists Award, a Cal Arts/Alpert Award, a Helen Merrill Award, and grants from the Creative Capital and NYFA. Lisa is also founding member of the OBIE- and Bessie-Award-winning collaborative theater company The Five Lesbian Brothers. She serves on the board of the MacDowell Colony and the Council of the Dramatists Guild of America.- Director
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Nadav Lapid was born on 8 April 1975 in Tel Aviv, Israel. He is a director and writer, known for The Kindergarten Teacher (2014), Synonyms (2019) and Policeman (2011).- Actor
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Michael Lieberman is an American actor and producer, originally from Hampton Roads, Virginia. He is most notably known for 2020: A 1917 Parody (2020).
Michael Lieberman is also an Army Combat Veteran and served in the California National Guard as a Blackhawk Helicopter Crew Chief. While serving, he actively fought wildfires every fire season, attached to CalFire.- Composer
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Mica Levi is a musician and composer born in Guildford, UK and living in South East London.
She has previously written music for films including Under The Skin (2014, dir. Jonathan Glazer), Jackie (2016, dir. Pablo Larraín), Monos (2018, dir. Alejandro Landes), Zola (2020, dir. Janicza Bravo) and Mangrove (2020, dir. Steve McQueen).- Editorial Department
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Darius Marder is known for Sound of Metal (2019), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) and Loot (2008). He is married to Liza Cassidy. They have two children.- Actress
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A veteran of stage and screen, award-winning actress Miriam Margolyes has achieved success on both sides of the Atlantic. Winner of the BAFTA Best Supporting Actress award in 1993 for The Age of Innocence (1993), she received Best Supporting Actress at the 1989 LA Critics Circle Awards for her role in Little Dorrit (1987) and a Sony Radio Award for Best Actress in 1993. She voiced "Fly, the dog" in Babe (1995).
Major credits include Yentl (1983), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), I Love You to Death (1990), End of Days (1999), Sunshine (1999), Cold Comfort Farm (1995), Cats & Dogs (2001), and Magnolia (1999). She played "Prof. Sprout" in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). More recently, she appeared in Stephen Hopkins', The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004), Modigliani (2004), István Szabó's Being Julia (2004) and Ladies in Lavender (2004) (with Dames Maggie Smith and Judi Dench).
Memorable television credits include Old Flames (1990), Freud (1984), The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1986), Blackadder (1982), The Girls of Slender Means (1975), Oliver Twist (1985), The History Man (1981), Vanity Fair (2004), and Supply & Demand (1997).
Stage credits include Peter Hall's Los Angeles production of "Romeo & Juliet"; "She Stoops to Conquer" and "Orpheus Descending" (both also for Peter Hall); "The Threepenny Opera" (directed by Tony Richardson); "The White Devil" at The Old Vic (for Michael Lindsay-Hogg); the Bristol Old Vic production of "The Canterbury Tales"; and her own award-winning one-woman show, "Dickens' Woman".
In the 2002 Queen's New Years Honours List, Queen Elizabeth II awarded her the OBE for her services to Drama.- Producer
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Michael Morris is known for To Leslie (2022), Better Call Saul (2015) and Bloodline (2015). He has been married to Mary McCormack since 5 July 2003. They have three children.- Producer
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Nira Park was born in December 1967. She is a producer and production manager, known for Baby Driver (2017), Attack the Block (2011) and Hot Fuzz (2007).- Writer
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Max Posner is known for The Characters (2016) and The Recorder (2021).- Director
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Sarah Ramos was born on 21 May 1991 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress and writer, known for Parenthood (2010), City Girl (2017) and The Bear (2022). She has been married to Matt Spicer since 25 October 2020.- Writer
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Howard A. Rodman is a screenwriter, novelist, and educator. He is a past President of the Writers Guild of America, West; a Vice President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; professor and former chair of the writing division at the USC School of Cinematic Arts; an artistic director of the Sundance Institute Screenwriting Labs; and a fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities. His films include Joe Gould's Secret; Savage Grace, starring Julianne Moore, - official selection Cannes Film Festival in 2007; and August, with Josh Hartnett, Rip Torn, and David Bowie.- Writer
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Jon Ronson was born on 10 May 1967 in Cardiff, Wales, UK. He is a writer and director, known for Frank (2014), Okja (2017) and The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009). He is married to Elaine Patterson.- Producer
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Jane Schoenbrun was born on 5 February 1987 in Ardsley, New York, USA. She is a producer and director, known for We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021), Collective: Unconscious (2016) and The Eyeslicer (2017).- Writer
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Sarah Schulman was born in New York City in 1958. She is a novelist, nonfiction writer, playwright, screenwriter and AIDS historian.
Her twenty books include: Novels: Maggie Terry, The Cosmopolitans, The Mere Future, The Child, Shimmer, Rat Bohemia, Empathy, People In Trouble, After Delores, Girls Visions and Everything, and The Sophie Horowitz Story
Nonfiction:Let The Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP, New York 1987-1993 (May, 2021), Conflict Is Not Abuse, The Gentrification of the Mind, Israel/Palestine and the Queer International, Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, Stagestruck: Theater AIDS and the Marketing of Gay America,My American History:Lesbian/Gay Life During the Reagan/Bush Years.
Plays: (Published) :Carson McCullers, Mercy
Plays: Produced: Carson McCullers (Playwrights Horizons), Manic Flight Reaction (Playwrights Horizons), Enemies, a Love Story (adapted from IB Singer- The Wilma Theater), The Lady Hamlet (The Provincetown Theater: July 2021)
Films (Writer): The Owls (dir Cheryl Dunye), Mommy Is Coming (dir Cheryl Dunye), Jason and Shirley (dir Stephen Winter)
Films (Co-Producer): United In Anger: A History of ACT UP (dir Jim Hubbard)- Director
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Emma Seligman was born on 3 May 1995 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is a director and writer, known for Shiva Baby (2020), Bottoms (2023) and Shiva Baby (2018).- Writer
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Mel Shimkovitz is known for High Maintenance (2016), Transparent (2014) and Kevin Can F**k Himself (2021).- Noam Shuster-Eliassi is known for A Gaza Weekend (2022), El Shosmo (2021) and Hayelet Bodeda (2006).
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- Script and Continuity Department
- Actress
Robyn Slovo is known for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), The Snowman (2017) and The Two Faces of January (2014).- Writer
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Shawn Slovo was born in 1950. Shawn is a writer and producer, known for A World Apart (1988), Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight (2013) and Catch a Fire (2006).- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Sarah Adina Smith is known for Buster's Mal Heart (2016), Lessons in Chemistry (2023) and Birds of Paradise (2021).- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Morgan Spector was born on 4 October 1980 in Sonoma County, California, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for The Plot Against America (2020), Homeland (2011) and Boardwalk Empire (2010). He has been married to Rebecca Hall since 26 September 2015. They have one child.- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Eve Ensler was born on 25 May 1953 in New York City, New York, USA. She is a producer and writer, known for Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Her Story (2015) and One Billion Rising (2014). She was previously married to Richard McDermott.- Madeline Weinstein was born in New York City and graduated from Northwestern University with a BA in Theater. In 2014 she made her Broadway debut alongside Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ewan McGregor and Cynthia Nixon in The Real Thing, and in 2017 made her film debut in Eliza Hittman's Beach Rats. She currently lives in Brooklyn with two cats.
- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Matt Wolf was born on 11 May 1982 in San Jose, California, USA. He is a director and producer, known for Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell (2008), Teenage (2013) and Bayard & Me (2017).- Producer
- Talent Agent
- Additional Crew
Jeremy Yaches was born on 14 November 1980 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Jeremy is a producer and talent agent, known for Hustle (2022), We the Animals (2018) and In a Dream (2008).- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Gary Yershon was born on 2 November 1954 in London, England, UK. He is a composer and actor, known for Mr. Turner (2014), Another Year (2010) and Happy-Go-Lucky (2008).- Director
- Editor
- Producer
Jeremiah grew up in South Philly spending most afternoons in a dark movie theater or wandering the aisles of his local TLA video store. In 2008 he completed his first documentary, In A Dream, which screened theatrically across the US and in film festivals around the world. It was broadcast on HBO, shortlisted for an Academy Award and received two Emmy nominations, including "Best Documentary."
His next feature-length documentary Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival and aired on HBO to much fanfare in 2014. His latest film, the feature-length narrative We The Animals, premiered at Sundance in 2018 and took home the NEXT Innovator Award. It will be released in theaters this August.
Other notable output includes the pilot episode for Showtime's 7 Deadly Sins, and commercial work for GE Capital, Pedigree and New Balance. When he's not working, Jeremiah spends his time swimming in New York City's finest public pools.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Ra'anan Alexandrowicz is a director, screenwriter and editor. He is known for the documentary The Law in These Parts (2011), which received the Grand Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival, a Peabody award, and numerous other prizes. His earlier documentaries, The Inner Tour (2001) and Martin (1999), were shown in the Berlin Film Festival's Forum section and MoMA's New Directors / New Films series. Alexandrowicz's single fiction feature, James' Journey to Jerusalem (2003), premiered in Cannes Directors' Fortnight and at the Toronto International Film Festival and received several international awards. Alexandrowicz's films have been released theatrically in the United States and Europe, and broadcast by PBS, ARTE, the BBC, as well as other television channels. He served several times as an editing advisor for the Sundance Documentary Fund and his 2020 film The Viewing Booth is supported by the Sundance Art of Nonfiction initiative.- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Liran Atzmor is known for The Kirshenbaum Diaries (2018), Sapir (2024) and The Law in These Parts (2011).- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Erin Axelman is known for Israelism (2023) and Generation Green New Deal (2020).- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Annie Baker is known for Janet Planet (2023), While We're Young (2014) and I Love Dick (2016). She is married to Nico Baumbach.- Actor
- Writer
- Composer
Morgan Bassichis is known for Valencia (2013), Gabey and Mike: A Jewish Summer Camp Love Story (2016) and We Have Always Been on Fire (2018).- Producer
- Writer
- Additional Crew
- Art Department
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer whose inspirations include Diego Rivera and Goya's The Disasters of War. She is the author of Brothers of the Gun, an illustrated collaboration with Syrian war journalist Marwan Hisham, which was a NY Times Notable Book and long-listed for the 2018 National Book Award. Her memoir, Drawing Blood, received global praise and attention.
Crabapple's reportage has been published in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. She is a fellow at the New America Foundation, and has previously been the 2019 artist-in-residence at NYU's Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, the Brooklyn Library's 2018 Katowitz Radin Artist-in-residence, and a Yale Poynter Fellow. She is currently a New America 2020 Fellow and a 2020 Bard Fellow at the Brooklyn Public Library.
She got her start as a journalist sketching the front lines of Occupy Wall Street, before covering, with words and art, Lebanese snipers, labor struggles in Abu Dhabi, Guantanamo Bay, the US border, America prisoners, Greek refugee camps, and the ravages of hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. She once confronted Donald Trump in Dubai about exploitation of the workers building his golf courses. As an award-winning animator, she has pioneered a new genre of live-illustrated explainer journalism, collaborating with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Jay Z, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and The ACLU. Her animations are on permanent display at The Equal Justice Initiative's Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama.
She has spoken to audiences around the world, from Jakarta to Beirut, Sao Paolo to Ramallah, Mumbai to Paris, at universities including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and The London School of Economics, and at museums including The Brooklyn Museum and The Guggenheim. Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the United States Library of Congress, and the New York Historical Society.- Actress
- Director
- Actress
- Writer
Esther Freud was born on 2 May 1963 in London, England, UK. She is an actress and writer, known for Doctor Who (1963), Mr Mac and Me and Hideous Kinky (1998). She has been married to David Morrissey since 15 August 2006. They have three children.- Actress
- Writer
- Costume Designer
Bella Freud was born on 17 April 1961 in London, England, UK. She is an actress and writer, known for Submission (2011), Hideous Man (2002) and The Legend of Leigh Bowery (2002). She is married to James Fox. They have one child.- Producer
- Director
Uri Fruchtmann was born in 1955 in Israel. He is a producer and director, known for Spice World (1997), The Atlantic Records Story (1994) and The Importance of Being Earnest (2002). He has been married to Catherine Cheshire since 2006. He was previously married to Annie Lennox.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Josh Gordon is an American film director, producer and writer.
He is best known for directing the films, Blades of Glory (2007) , Office Christmas Party (2016) and The Switch (2010) . He is one half of the directing team known as Speck and Gordon with co-director, Will Speck . The team is also known for their prolific advertising career, having directed hundreds of commercials including the iconic Cavemen and Gecko campaigns for Geico. Their work has won every major award in advertising, including Cannes Lions, Cleos, British Arrows, and the ADA 50. He has also been nominated for an Academy Award for his short film "Culture" and for an Emmy for his series "The Power Inside" staring Harvey Keitel.- Director
- Writer
- Additional Crew