Once in a Lifetime

Amber Fares is an award-winning documentary director. producer and cinematographer. Her recent projects include America Inside Out with Katie Couric (National Geographic 2018, Senior Producer/Cinematographer), Transparent(Amazon 2017, Associate Producer) and The Judge (TIFF 2017, Cinematographer/Co-Producer). She also directed, produced, and filmed Sundance-supported Speed Sisters (Hot Docs 2015, Netflix) which the New York Times called “Subtly Rebellious and Defiantly Optimistic”. Amber‘s films have won numbers awards and have played in film festivals around the world, including TIFF, Sheffield, Hot Docs, IDFA, CPH:Dox, and Doc NYC. Her work has been featured on CNN, Al Jazeera, ALLURE, Amazon, Hulu, PBS, and National Geographic. Amber was a 2014 Sundance Catalyst fellow, 2014 Sundance Institute Edit and Story Lab Fellow and is currently a Sundance Momentum Fellow.

As a descendant of immigrants displaced by conflict, Eunice Lau is drawn to stories about the journey of the immigrant and the profundity of hyphenated identities. It’s this inheritance that makes her cognizant of injustice, and her storytelling personal. Her documentary Accept the Call aired on PBS Independent Lens, after screening at acclaimed festivals such as Human Rights Watch and Woodstock. Her work is supported by Tribeca Film Institute, ITVS, and Chicken & Egg Pictures. She has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Variety, and Filmmaker Magazine. She received an MFA in Film Directing from New York University and a bachelor’s in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from University of York.

Laura Checkoway‘s Edith+Eddie received an Academy Award and Emmy nomination in 2018 and has won numerous awards including the IDA Documentary Awards Best Short. The film is executive produced by Steve James and Cher. A short doc series that she produced with PBS was nominated for two Emmys in 2020. Laura‘s work earned a social impact grant from NBC Universal and the American Film Institute and a nonfiction fellowship with the Carey Institute for Global Good in 2018. Her award-winning debut film Lucky screened across the globe and premiered on television in 2014. With a background in journalism, Laura penned revealing celebrity profiles and investigative features for many publications and she was senior editor of Vibe magazine. She co-authored the acclaimed book My Infamous Life: The Autobiography of Mobb Deep’s Prodigy and the New York Times Best Seller My Voice: A Memoir by Angie Martinez.

Rita Baghdadi is a Moroccan-American documentary filmmaker whose work has been supported by Sundance, Tribeca, Netflix, Film Independent, and the International Documentary Association. The Hollywood Reporter described Rita‘s camerawork as “intimate.” Rita’s feature documentary My Country No More won Best Feature at the 2018 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and was picked up for broadcast by Independent Lens. Her second feature, City Rising, won three Emmy Awards including Best Social Issue Film. Rita is co-founder of Endless Eye, a production studio in Los Angeles, and in addition to taking feature documentaries from conception to completion, she has lensed and directed commercial content for major brands including Beats by Dre, Bud Lite, and Gatorade. Rita also shot the feature documentary Served Like a Girl (SXSW ’17) which was distributed in theaters across the U.S. When she’s not filming Rita is an active mentor, dedicated to empowering women and girls through film training. Currently, she is in development on her next feature documentary, Sirens, a coming-of-age story about the first female metal band in the Middle East.