Kristi Jacobson, Director & Producer, is a New York-based Emmy Award-winning filmmaker whose films capture nuanced, intimate, and provocative portrayals of individuals and communities. Her film, A Place at the Table (Participant Media/Magnolia Pictures), called “one of the most important…and gripping non-fiction films to debut in some time” by Indiewire, premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival before its theatrical release in over 35 U.S. cities. The film examines the shocking paradox of hunger in the wealthiest nation on earth through the very personal stories of three American families who face food insecurity daily; it won the International Documentary Association’s Pare Lorentz Award and was nominated for Best Feature Documentary by the Producers Guild of America. Previous films include the critically acclaimed Toots, winner of the National Board of Review’s 2007 Top Documentary Award and voted 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and American Standoff (HBO), produced by two-time Oscar winner Barbara Kopple. Jacobson is a member of the Director’s Guild of America, NYWIFT, and a two-time Sundance Creative Producing Fellow. She is a recipient of grants from Tribeca Film Institute, Sundance Institute, Bertha Foundation, Catapult Film Fund, and a 2016 recipient of the Chicken & Egg Pictures Breakthrough Filmmaker Award, which aims to support filmmakers to continue to be strong advocates for urgent issues.
Julie Goldman, Producer, founded Motto Pictures in 2009. She is an Emmy Award-winning producer and executive producer of documentary feature films. Julie is producer of Life, Animated and executive producer of Weiner, both of which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. Life, Animated won the US Documentary Directing Award and will be released by The Orchard. Weiner won the US Documentary Grand Jury Prize and was acquired by IFC Films and Showtime. She is executive producer of 3 ½ Minutes, Ten Bullets and Best of Enemies both of which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and were shortlisted for the 2016 Academy Award. Julie also executive produced The Kill Team and Art and Craft, both released by Oscilloscope and shortlisted for the 2015 Academy Award. She produced three films that premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival: Gideon’s Army, Manhunt and the Oscar shortlisted God Loves Uganda, and several other films, including The Great Invisible, which won the SXSW Grand Jury Prize and was released by RADiUS TWC; A Place at the Table, which was released by Magnolia Pictures, and the Oscar shortlisted Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry. Julie produced Buck, winner of the Sundance Documentary Audience Award, shortlisted for an Academy Award and one of 2011’s top five grossing documentaries. She consulted on the Academy Award-winning The Cove and produced the Oscar shortlisted Sergio.
Katie Mitchell, Producer, is an Australian filmmaker and lawyer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her documentaries have played at festivals across Australia and abroad, including Raindance Film Festival and London International Documentary Festival. She has worked for various human rights and arts organizations including the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, and as Director of Film Programming at the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival. Katie graduated from Monash University, Melbourne with a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Laws with first class honors. She later completed post-graduate studies in documentary filmmaking at the Victorian College of the Arts.
David Menschel, Executive Producer, is a criminal defense attorney and president of Vital Projects Fund, a charitable foundation that seeks to reform the criminal justice system, with a focus on issues like death penalty abolition, excessive sentencing, police and prosecutorial accountability, solitary confinement, parole, drug policy reform, and post-9/11 civil liberties. In addition, he has helped to produce Academy Award-winning and Emmy nominated documentary films like citizenfour, The Oath, Detropia, and War Don Don. Formerly, David was an attorney at the Innocence Project in New York City and legal director of the Innocence Project of Florida, where he helped to free individuals who were wrongfully convicted. He is author of Abolition Without Deliverance: The Law of Connecticut Slavery, 1784-1848, published in the Yale Law Journal. Before attending law school, he taught American history to high school students. He received a B.A. from Princeton University (’93) and a J.D. from Yale Law School (’02). He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Ben Gold, Editor, is a New York-based Emmy Award nominated editor who has worked extensively in the documentary field. He has worked on numerous episodes of FRONTLINE on PBS, including the DuPont Award winning United States of Secrets and Truth, War and Consequences, and the Emmy winning Money, Power and Wall Street. He also worked with director Amir Bar-Lev on the concert film 12-12-12 and is currently working on the documentary feature, Far From The Tree, based on the book by Andrew Solomon.
Nelson Hume, Director of Photography, is a Director of Photography living in Brooklyn, New York. He was originally planning a career in art when the New York independent film scene exploded in the mid 80’s. Inspired, he enrolled at NYU Graduate School of Film and Television where he won the Johnson Fellowship Award. Nelson’s narrative film background overlays his work as a documentary cinematographer. He relishes the challenge of finding a cinematic language for real world stories. His work has been seen on National Geographic, Showtime, A&E Films, HBO, OWN, PBS, Bravo, Discovery Channel, Sundance Channel and ESPN. Recent credits include, “Happy Valley” by Amir Bar-Lev, “Code Black”, an emergency room documentary recently adapted as a series for CBS and “Good Bones”, a narrative feature film directed by Tim Bohn. Nelson is deeply grateful to the correction officers and inmates in “Solitary” who so openly and bravely shared their lives and stories for the camera.
T. Griffin, Original Music, is a composer, producer and songwriter based in Brooklyn New York. He has composed music for over 30 feature-length films and dozens of live multidisciplinary projects, with at least one represented at Sundance every year since 2009. As a player and producer he has worked with independent luminaries including Patti Smith, Vic Chesnutt, Tom Verlaine and members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Fugazi and The Ex. He was one of six composers selected as a fellow at the Sundance Composer's lab in 2008 and has been nominated twice for CinemaEye Honors for original music score.
Alicia Sams, Consulting Producer, is Director of the Speaker Series at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. She has over 25 years of experience in both documentary and feature films. Currently, she is producing and directing White House Ghosts, about presidential speechwriters, and producing a film about Art Spiegelman with Molly Bernstein. Recent projects include: Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay (AMERICAN MASTERS and Kino-Lorber); “The Battle for Kansas,” (Al Jazeera); and Arab American Stories, an Emmy-Award winning public television series she conceived, produced and directed for Detroit Public Television. She produced and directed (with Amy Rice) the Emmy-Award winning film By The People: The Election of Barack Obama (HBO 2009). Also in 2009, Sams was executive producer of Cherien Dabis' award-winning debut feature AMREEKA. Past films include: Toots, Wanderlust, Grateful Dawg, Hello He Lied: And Other Tales from the Hollywood Trenches, Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen’s,and Keeping Time: New Music from America’s Roots.