Film

Grit

PBS (2018) Feature Documentary
Co-Directed with Sasha Friedlander

Winner of 13 film awards. Emmy nomination.

A multinational natural gas drilling company is accused of unleashing a tsunami of mud that displaces 60,000 people and buries 16 villages in East Java. Teenager Dian, who lost her home in the mud, galvanizes her neighbors to fight against the corporation.

Generation Startup

Netflix (2016) Feature Documentary
Director

Featuring Andrew Yang. Generation Startup takes us to the front lines of entrepreneurship in America, capturing the struggles and triumphs of six recent college graduates who put everything on the line to build startups in Detroit. Shot over 17 months, the film looks at risk-taking.

Mondays at Racine

HBO (2013) Short Documentary
Director/Producer

Oscar nominee, 5 film awards. Every third Monday of the month, two sisters open up their hair salon and offer free beauty services for women undergoing chemotherapy. The story of what hair means in our culture quickly unfolds into an unexpected look at womanhood, marriage, and survival.

Sesame Street: Growing Hope Against Hunger

PBS (2011) Prime Time TV Special
Director

Emmy Award-winning Sesame Street special featuring four children who face food insecurity.

Born Sweet

(2010) Short Doc, Sundance Honorable Mention
Director/Producer

Short-listed for an Oscar nomination, 17 film awards. Fifteen-year-old Vinh dreams of becoming a karaoke star, but his body is scarred by arsenic poisoning due to tainted well water. A chance to star in a karaoke video about the dangers of arsenic allows Vinh to wonder if he truly knows his destiny. 

Freeheld

HBO, Oscar-winning documentary (2008) & 16 film awards - Director
Inspired the Lionsgate feature adaptation (2015) - Producer

Lieutenant Laurel Hester is dying.‍ ‍All Laurel wants to do is leave her pension benefits to her life partner Stacie — so Stacie can afford to keep their house. After spending a lifetime fighting for justice for others, Laurel launches a final battle for justice. Freeheld chronicles a dying policewoman's bitter fight to provide for the love of her life.

Shelter Dogs

HBO (2004) Feature Documentary
Director/Producer

Five film awards. Animal sheltering pioneer Sue Sternberg and her staff face difficult decisions of which animals will be saved for adoption and which will be euthanized. The story hangs on the troubling moral dilemmas surrounding some of the "gray area" dogs. If a dog bites a shelter worker, is it ethical to adopt him out? If a dog guards his food, can he be trusted in a family with children? Filmed and edited over the course of three years, this award-winning film provides a provocative look at the morally ambiguous world of animal sheltering.

Grist for the Mill

Cinemax (1999) Feature Documentary
Director/Producer

Filmmaker Cynthia Wade is trying to get her divorced parents to talk to each other, but that is the last thing they want to do. Nothing ever seems to work out the way Wade hopes it will. At least she has a job (calling out Bingo numbers), a loving family (although her father's new wife is just a few years older than Wade), and a social life (if answering an emergency hotline on a Saturday night counts). So what if her sister gets all of the dates and her father is finally getting the son he always wanted? Wade is armed with her camera, and the result is a family story that Variety called “a jewel” and The Hollywood Reporter called “a delight, full of quirky moments and clever humor.”