The Team
Producer and Director
DENISE ZMEKHOL is an Arabic-Brazilian journalist, an award-winning producer and director of documentary films and media projects that span the globe. Her documentary films, commercials, and innovative transmedia projects have been recognized for their elegant visual style and deft storytelling. Her feature documentary CHILDREN OF AMAZON was supported by the Independent Television Service and broadcast on PBS, as well as on European and Latin American television. Through captivating photos and interviews, CHILDREN OF AMAZON won multiple awards at film festivals around the world. Denise co-produced and co-directed Digital Journey, an Emmy Award winning PBS series exploring emerging technologies in their social, environmental and cultural contexts. Recently Denise co-directed Bridge to the Future a short for PBS/TED Talks and was co-producer on Amir Soltani’s Dogtown Redemption that was exhibited on the PBS series Independent Lens.
Denise presented the story of her current film SKIN OF GLASS at the Pop-Up Magazine Spring 2019 tour in seven cities and with women from around the world at the TEDWomen BOLD + BRILLIANT conference in Palm Springs.
Executive Producer
ANNE CORCOS is the president of SEEDS for Communities and has helped fund several notable documentary films, including CHILDREN OF THE AMAZON, shown on PBS and international television as well as The Most Distant Places also shown on KQED Frontier. She is an Executive Producer on Tibet in Song, awarded the Jury Prize at Sundance and Buddha’s Homecoming .
Executive Producer
JAMIE WOLF is a journalist, editor, photographer, and film producer. She served as Vice President of the Board of PEN Center United States, as well as chair of the center’s annual Literary Awards Festival, until the center’s unification with PEN America in 2018. Wolf is member of Impact Partners, a documentary producing consortium and she has executive produced many award-winning films, notably Born This Way, Audrey and Daisy, Us Kids, Truffle Hunters.
Executive Producer
ELIZABETH KING has worked with nonprofit organizations and foundations in media, the environment and social justice for over two decades. From 2002 to 2013, she developed and managed a nonprofit promoting and supporting other nonprofits globally through the use of short films. Currently, Elizabeth manages her family foundation and is a member of Impact Partners, supporting films that align with their passions, including The Social Dilemma, Alive Inside, Meet the Patels, Chasing Ice , and Chasing Coral. She is also working towards a degree from Berklee College of Music’s online program which focuses on music production, composition and orchestration.
Executive Producer
NANCY BLACHMAN is an executive producer of documentaries and has assisted in funding more than 78 films. She works primarily with female filmmakers and films that put a human face on issues that might otherwise not get the attention they deserve—many having reached audiences through broad theatrical release as well as broadcast and streaming platforms. She has been a part of notable films as: Aftershock, Athlete A and The Social Dilemma and an active participant of the Sundance Catalyst Forum.
“Skin of Glass is about architecture, not only as an architect’s vision but as a nation’s reflection—an open question about how the poor create, occupy and reclaim space in a modern city.”
Co-Producer
AMIR SOLTANI is an Iranian-American writer, journalist and human rights activist who has worked in business, media, nonprofits and philanthropy. His graphic novel, Zahra’s Paradise, has become a global multi-media phenomenon. The story of a mother and blogger’s search for Mehdi, a student who has vanished in the aftermath of Iran’s presidential elections, Zahra’s Paradise has made publishing history as a real-time online graphic novel that appears in fifteen languages. It has been covered by dozens of news outlets including The Economist, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, BBC, and others. Amir was the executive producer and co-director of Dogtown Redemption (PBS/Independent Lens). What he brings to this project are the conceptual powers and gifts of the storyteller, the passion of the human rights activist and the skills of the community builder. Amir studied social and intellectual history at Tufts and Harvard.
“An exploration of the life and death of a São Paulo skyscraper, Skin of Glass is a potent inquiry into personal loss and the fragile state of any democracy.”
Co-Producer and Writer
LEAH MAHAN is an independent documentary filmmaker whose work has been nominated by the Directors Guild of America for Outstanding Directorial Achievement. Sweet Old Song aired on the PBS series P.O.V. and was selected by Roger Ebert for his Overlooked Film Festival. She served as U.S. Film Envoy for the American Film Showcase, traveling to Indonesia with Come Hell or High Water: The Battle for Turkey Creek, which aired on the PBS World series America ReFramed. Leah has been a Fellow at Sundance Documentary Editing and Story Lab and Sundance/Skoll Stories of Change, and a Hatchlab Mentor for the Alliance for Media Arts and Culture. Leah’s work has been supported by Sundance, ITVS, Ford Foundation and W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Co-Producer
RICHARD O’CONNELL is an Emmy Award-winning creative producer, filmmaker, and educator living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has worked for 15 years at the Independent Television Service serving as Head of Production and later as Senior Producer of National Productions. During his time at ITVS, Richard oversaw the production, delivery and broadcast of over 600 films, over 150 million dollars of funding to independent filmmakers, and distribution to PBS and national television series including Frontline, American Masters, Great Performances, POV and Independent Lens. Today Richard works as a creative Producer with Independent documentary filmmakers across a range of both domestic and international projects. Also, Richard works as an independent filmmaker and teaches at Berkeley City College.
Co-Producer
NATHALIE SEAVER has a long history in the film industry which began in France and has held various creative development positions in New York and Los Angeles, at Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers and Showtime, as a Development and Production VP of Drama, Longform. In 2020, she took on her current role as Executive Vice President of Foothill Productions, where she has shepherded a robust slate of films which have debuted at Sundance, TIFF, The Venice International Film Festival and Tribeca, including the 2023 Oscar nominated short, The Martha Mitchell Effect and the recently released documentary, Desperate Souls, Dark City, and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy. Seaver is also an award-winning photo-based artist and has presented her work extensively in gallery exhibitions across the United States and Paris. Her work has been featured in various publications, including the Getty Museum Iris blog.
Writer and Story Consultant
ELLEN BRUNO is an award winning documentary filmmaker based in San Francisco. With a background in international relief work, Ellen’s films have focused on issues at the forefront of human rights. She began her relief efforts in remote Mayan villages in Tabasco, Mexico and has worked in refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border with the International Rescue Committee, in Vietnamese boat camps with The Refugee Section of the American Embassy in Thailand, and as director of the Cambodian Women's Project for the American Friends Service Committee. Ellen completed a master degree in documentary film at Stanford University. She is a recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships, a Goldie Award for Outstanding Artist, an Alpert Award for the Arts, an Anonymous Was A Woman Award for the Arts, a Shenkin Fellowship from Yale University School of Art, and was an Artist-in-Residence at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Editor
JOSH PETERSON is a Berkeley-based filmmaker who has worked as a freelance editor for clients ranging from KQED to Lucasfilm to Apple and countless independent documentary producers making films for PBS, ABC, the Sci-Fi Channel, National Geographic Explorer, and others. His feature-length documentary credits include the acclaimed Born This Way, The Welcome and The Island President. He was nominated for a national Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Editing for his work on Soldiers of Conscience. He also edited The Rape of Europa, which was short-listed for a Best Documentary Academy Award. Josh has produced, written, and directed several award-winning narrative films, including the shorts Forest Born and The Night of My Death, and his first feature, Like Reply Share.
Composer
BETO VILLARES is a songwriter and soundtrack producer whose work spans over numerous projects that explore and synthesize Brazilian culture through the decades. Since producing the theme song for the Olympic Games 2016 in Rio, his unique musical style and sound textures have contributed to works from prominent artists such as Céu, Siba, Itamar and Anelis Assumpção, and to movies such as Xingu, Bingo, Sons of Carnival and River of Desire.
Story Consultant
RICARDO ACOSTA is a film editor, script consultant and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Canadian Cinema Editors. Acosta moved to Canada from his native Cuba where he studied and worked at the world-renowned Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC). He has been an Alumni and Adviser of the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Editing Lab, and the Music Composition and Sound Design Lab. A few of his editing and story consulting credits include: Once Upon a Time in Venezuela, The Letter, The Silence of Others, winner of GOYA, ALMA, and the Berlinale Panorama Documentary Audience Award, Sembene!, and Marmato. His films have premiered at Sundance, Cannes, and IDFA, among other world film festivals. He is an Emmy winner and nominee for the Canadian Industry Genie and Gemini Awards, Canadian Film Editors Association Awards and Canadian Screen Awards.
Consulting Producer
DAVID FELIX SUTCLIFFE is a Sundance and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker. His debut film (T)error premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Documentary and was acquired by Netflix. He was a consulting producer on Jonathan Olshefski's Quest (POV), Stephen Maing's Crime + Punishment (Hulu,) a co-producer on Rodrigo Reyes' 499 (Cinema Guild,) and a producer on Débora Souza Silva's Black Mothers Love & Resist (Sundance-supported). His work has been funded by the Sundance Documentary Fund, the Ford Foundation, BBC Storyville, ITVS, and the Open Society Foundation, and he is a former Sundance Edit Lab and Creative Producing Lab Fellow, a Soros Equality Fellow and a Pew Center for Arts and Heritage Fellow.
Cinematography
LEONARDO MAESTRELLI is a director of photography and director with a degree from PUC-Rio Grande do Sul. He directed How to Meet the Challenges of Modern Life, which won the Brazilian Reality Award at the 12th Brazilian Film Festival. In 2008, he began to work exclusively as a cinematographer. He worked on the series CHAOS, which was exhibited on the History Channel, and on Pitanga, awarded as the best Brazilian Film of the 40th International Film Festival of Sao Paulo. Recently, Leonardo, has been working on the films Duel and After Being Gray. In 2017, Leonardo filmed the second season of the series Dreams of Abu and the film Ants.
Cinematography
HELOISA PASSOS received several awards, among them Best Picture at the Rio Film Festival 2016 for Mulher do Pai, Best Cinematography at Gramado Film Festival 2008 for Areia, and Best Cinematography at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival for Manda Bala. She has worked extensively in Brazil and in the United States with award-winning film directors such as Richard Robbins, Laura Poitras, Jason Kohn, Charles Ferguson and Gini Reticker. In 2015 Passos was invited by Glenn Greenwald to direct two episodes for the web series Field of Vision for The Intercept.
Cinematography
JACOB SOLITRENICK is a director of photography for fiction, documentary and publicity. He was born in São Paulo and graduated in Technology of Animal Husbandry at São Paulo University, but his true passion was already cinema. Even before graduation he took a break and did his first internship, moving definitively to the film industry. He worked as a set producer, art producer and was a camera assistant for eight years. In 1994 he moved to DoP. He's photographed more than 25 features and six series. He also directed and photographed four seasons of the series Singers from Brazil.
Associate Producer
DAVID BERGAD worked in feature film post-production for twenty years, lending his sound editing talents to fifty films. His credits include Forrest Gump, The Sixth Sense, The English Patient, and Amadeus (Director’s Cut). He also worked with legendary film producer Saul Zaentz for eight years, with responsibility for a wide range of duties related to such notable films as Amadeus, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. David served as Vice-President of the Berkeley FILM Foundation’s Board of Directors from BFF’s founding in 2009, transitioning to Executive Director/Program Director from January 2014 until December 2018.
Associate Producer
SAGE BRUCIA is an associate producer, assistant editor and archival researcher. He has contributed to such projects as the Emmy Award-winning film series Have You Heard From Johannesburg, the Peabody Award-winning film Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa, the Emmy Award-nominated film Dogtown Redemption and the NAACP Image Award-winning film Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth To Power.
Advisor
FRANCESCO PERROTTA-BOSCH is an architect and essayist. He graduated from the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and received his master’s degree at the University of São Paulo (FAU USP) where he is also currently pursuing his PhD. His 2013 essay The Architecture of the Intervals won the Prize Serrote, a prize promoted by the Instituto Moreira Salles. He was the curator of the exhibitions Irradiações - Fabio Penteado (Casa da Arquitectura, Matosinhos, Portugal, 2019), Housing Project And Fight, Squat, Resist (both with Pedro Rivera in Studio X Rio, a Columbia University institution in Rio de Janeiro, 2017). He was Curatorial Assistant of the Brazilian Pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale (2016). He organized the book Biselli Katchborian (Acacia Cultural, 2019) and he is the coauthor of Entre. Entrevistas Com Arquitetos Por Estudantes De Arquitetura (Viana & Mosley, 2012). Francesco is a writer for Folha de São Paulo (Brazil), Plot and Summa+ (Argentina), Architectural Design and Architectural Review (England). He is a permanent member of the architectural jury of the Associação Paulista de Críticos de Arte (APCA).
Graphic Designer
SUSANNE WEIHL is an art director/designer. She integrates design excellence with brand objectives. Her clients have included global non-profits striving to make a positive impact on the world, independent filmmakers, corporate brands, publishers of art and culture. From UNICEF, Stanford University and Levi Strauss & Co. to Chronicle Books and Robert Mondavi Winery, she creates strategic tools for her clients to stay relevant in our ever-changing world.
Photography
Crediting three immensely talented photographers, both for their creative courage and sensitive journaling of the beauty and struggle held within the Pele de Vidro.
PLINIO HOKAMA ANGELI
LINCOLN SANTOS CASTILHOS
CAMILA MISSAKI