Marco Williams (Director) is an award-winning filmmaker. He has been nominated three times for the Sundance Film Festival grand jury prize. He has spent his entire film career exploring the question of injustice. He is a filmmaker whose films unmask the complexities of the human condition. A reviewer of his films shared: “You make films about the stories we prefer to keep hidden.”
His credits include: Murders that Matter (2023), A New Greenbook, (2022), Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre (2021), Crafting an Echo (2018), Lonnie Holley: The Truth of the Dirt (2017), Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (2017), The Black Fives (2014), The Undocumented (2013), Inside the New Black Panthers (2009), Banished (2007), Freedom Summer (2006), I Sit Where I Want: The Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education (2004), MLK Boulevard: The Concrete Dream (2003), Two Towns of Jasper (2002), In Search of Our Fathers (1992), From Harlem to Harvard (1982).
Williams’ films have screened at festivals including Sundance, Berlin, Hot Docs, Full Frame and Toronto, and been broadcast on PBS, History Channel, National Geographic, and Discovery. Internationally they have screened on the BBC, The CBC, ABC, and other countries.
His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a George Foster Peabody Award, the Beacon Award, Alfred I duPont Silver Baton, Pan African Film Festival Outstanding Documentary Award, Full Frame Documentary Festival Spectrum Award, National Association of Black Journalists First Place Salute to Excellence Award, and 2023 Emmy nomination for Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre.
Williams received a B.A. from Harvard University, in Visual and Environmental Studies, a Master of Arts degree from UCLA in Afro-American Studies and a Master of Fine Arts in UCLA’s Producing Program. Williams is a Professor at Northwestern University in the MFA in Documentary Media Program
Danielle Beverly (Producer) is a mid-career, independent documentary filmmaker with four feature documentaries as Director/Producer. The Hijacker is the second project she has produced with director Marco Williams. The first was Lonnie Holley: The Truth of the Dirt, broadcast on Black Public Media’s AfroPop series.
As a Director/Producer, Beverly works as a one-person crew to craft observational documentaries that have been selected for industry events at DOC NYC and Doha Film Institute’s Qumra, been broadcast on PBS/World Channel and Al Jazeera Witness, and received distribution through Women Make Movies. Her latest documentary, Qatar Stars (2023) follows a rhythmic gymnastics school, with girls aged 9-15 from Qatar, Lebanon, Egypt, Ukraine, UK. Her funders have included: Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media, Doha Film Institute, NYSCA, Puffin, Eastman Fund, Illinois Arts Council, University Film & Video Foundation, and Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. Her Fellowships include: Flaherty Fellowship, First Cut Lab, Mary L. Nohl Artists Fellowship for Established Artists, BAVC National MediaMaker Fellowship, and CPB/PBS Producer’s Academy.
Beverly is an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University, teaching documentary in the Radio, TV and Film Department and MFA in Documentary Media Program.
Michael Torres (Editor) is an Artist, Filmmaker, and Editor. Torres combines his love of filmmaking and art to create living stories that uplift and inspire. As an independent producer and editor Torres has created original content for The Spring Hill Company, YouTube Originals, Fox Sports, Spotify Studios, NFL Network, and ESPN. Presently, Michael Torres is in post-production on The Gods of Puerto Rico, a documentary series that explores the history of the island through the story of Afro Puerto Rican revolutionary Pedro Albizu Campos and his quest for freedom. When he’s not in production, Torres is a counselor and meditation teacher at the Agape International Spiritual Center in Los Angeles.
Ian Kelly (Animator) is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who uses animation as means to enliven stories of personal and historical memory. Kelly’s practice aligns the formal qualities of animation with characteristics of memory including fragmentation, transformation, and an emphasis on sensory details. His films have played at film festivals across the U.S., including the Chicago International Film Festival, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, and Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Kelly has edited films about dinosaurs for the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, and films on Oprah for the National Museum of African American History and Culture. In his review for the NYT, Wesley Morris said of the latter that it featured “…one of the most charming pieces of editing you’re going to see.” Ian Kelly was the Assistant Editor on the short film, The Neighbors’ Window, winner of the 2020 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short.