DIRECTORS

Heather Courtney is an Emmy-winning filmmaker, and a Guggenheim, Sundance, and Fulbright fellow. Her film WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM, which was broadcast nationally on the PBS series POV, won an Emmy, an Independent Spirit Award, and a SXSW Jury Award. It made several Top 10 films lists, including Salon’s Best Non-fiction, and was supported by many grants and fellowships, including from the Sundance Documentary Fund, the United States Artists Fellowship, and ITVS. She has directed and produced several other documentary films including award-winners LETTERS FROM THE OTHER SIDE, and LOS TRABAJADORES, both broadcast nationally on PBS. They were supported by a Fulbright and an International Documentary Association Award. She was commissioned by The Center for New American Media to direct a short documentary on the urban/rural divide as part of the Postcards from the Great Divide documentary series, which streamed on PBS and the Washington Post online. Most recently she co-directed and produced a Ford- and MacArthur-funded feature documentary about undocumented immigrant students in Georgia, called THE UNAFRAID. It won the Human Rights Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and was recently broadcast on World Channel/ America ReFramed. Prior to receiving her MFA in Film, Heather spent eight years writing and photographing for the United Nations and several refugee and immigrant rights organizations, including in the Rwandan refugee camps after the Rwandan genocide.