Anjali Nayar
Writer/Director/Producer and TIMBY Founder
Anjali has been working with the environmental networks featured in this project for over six years. Anjali’s feature directorial debut, Gun Runners (2016), about Kenyan warriors turned marathoners, premiered at Hot Docs and is now available on Netflix. Anjali is also directing Just A Band, a fractionally-fictional documentary about an Afro-electric pop group that wants to go to space, as well as a number of short creative and virtual reality films.
Beyond film, Anjali founded TIMBY (This Is My Backyard), a suite of digital tools that helps activists report, verify and tell stories safely. She has a Masters from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, a Masters in Environmental Management from Oxford and a Graduate degree from the International Space University.
Hawa Essuman
Director
Hawa has worked in theatre and narrative storytelling for 15 years, her work ranging from TV commercials, television series’ and documentary. Her feature film, Soul Boy, screened at over 40 film festivals worldwide, winning several awards, including the Dioraphte Audience Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Her film premiered at the Tate Modern in 2012 as part of Olafur Eliasson’s Little Sun Project.
Steven Markovitz
Producer
Steven Markovitz (producer) has been producing and distributing documentaries and fiction for over 20 years. He has produced and co-produced over 50 documentaries including Winnie (Best Director World Documentary Competition Sundance 2017), Beats of the Antonov (Winner Documentary Audience Award at TIFF, 2014), One Day After Peace by Erez Laufer (Hotdocs, IDFA), Congo in Four Acts (Berlinale, Hotdocs, IDFA) and Project 10 (Sundance, Hotdocs, Berlinale, Tribeca, IDFA). Current projects include a new Yoav Shamir documentary (Defamation, Checkpoint). His fiction work has screened at Cannes, Berlinale, Toronto and Sundance, and has an Oscar nomination. He is a founder of the Encounters Documentary Festival, Electric South and has spearheaded African wide theatrical distribution. More at bigworldcinema.com
Edward Zwic
Executive Producer
Edward Zwick is an American filmmaker and film producer noted for his films about social and racial issues. His films include Glory (1989), Legends of the Fall (1994), The Siege (1998), The Last Samurai (2003), Blood Diamond (2006), and Defiance (2008). Along with Marshall Herskovitz, Zwick runs a film production company called The Bedford Falls Company (inspired by the name of the town featured in Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life). This company has produced such notable films as Traffic and Shakespeare in Love and the TV shows Thirtysomething, Relativity, Once and Again, and My So-Called Life. He was one of the recipients of the Academy Award for Best Picture for Shakespeare in Love; he was also nominated in the same category for Traffic.
Jonathan Stack
Executive Producer
Born in New York City, Jonathan spent much of his 20’s exploring the world during which time he took an interest to film.
Jonathan Stack is an Emmy Award winning and two- time Academy Award nominated documentary filmmaker. In 1991 he founded GABRIEL FILMS and has since gone on to produce over fifty films for dozens of cable channels in the US and many television partners abroad. He has released several films theatrically and shown his work at many of the major festivals including Sundance where he won the Grand Jury Prize in 1998.
While working as an independent filmmaker Stack has earned a reputation for his unique ability to gain access into forbidden and even dangerous worlds. His exclusives include, President Charles Taylor’s farewell speech to the nation of Liberia and a rare interview with David Miscaivage, head of the Church of Scientology. He has filmed inside Angola Prison over 15 years, travelled with militias in Guinea and Liberia and been to a last supper four times. He has filmed 10,000 feet below sea level and 20,000 feet above, told a few stories that took place thousands of years ago and even more stories that are happening today.
He founded World Vasectomy Day with Dr. Doug Stein to inspire men world wide to part of the most important decision of our lives.
Leonardo DiCaprio
Jennifer Davisson
Executive Producer
