Filmmakers

Margaret Munzer Loeb

Director/Executive Producer

Margaret Munzer Loeb is a filmmaker and philanthropist who founded and manages Lismore Road Productions and MML Productions. Margaret directed and executive produced Chasing Childhood and has executive produced several other feature-length documentary films including Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, Found, Driving While Black and New York: Episode 9: The Future of Cities. She earned her bachelor’s in history and visual art from Brown University and her master’s from the NYU Silver School of Social Work. In addition to the Dean’s Council, Margaret is a member of the boards of Prep for Prep and PEN America and both the President’s Leadership Council and President’s Advisory Council on the Arts at Brown University.

Eden Wurmfeld

Director/Producer

Eden Wurmfeld is an Emmy-nominated producer and director. As a filmmaker, she is driven by the soul, heart, and message of a particular story. Along with Chasing Childhood she also completed The Big Scary S Word in 2020. Her most recent fiction effort, What Comes Around, premiered at TIFF 2022 and will be released by IFC Films August, 2023. Among her other credits are the Netflix Original Saving Capitalism, featuring former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, which launched worldwide in 2017, No Impact Man (Sundance, Oscilloscope), Left On Purpose (Gunpowder and Sky), My So-Called Enemy (PBS) and Romeo Romeo (PBS). Her earlier fiction films include the award-winning indie hit Kissing Jessica Stein (Fox Searchlight), Puccini For Beginners (Sundance, IFC), which premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, The Hammer (The Weinstein Co.) and Swingers (Miramax). Eden is a member of the DGA, PGA as well as a founding member of the Documentary Producers Alliance (DPA). She routinely serves on panels and juries across the industry. Eden received her MFA in film from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television.

Lisa Eisenpresser

Producer

Lisa Eisenpresser is a producer and entrepreneur. She was President of Relativity Digital Studios where she made Summer Forever, the first musical feature film for digital platforms. She also created one of the first branded entertainment TV series, Motor City Masters, for Tru TV and TNT. Lisa founded three companies: The Story Lab, the branded content division of global agency, Dentsu Aegis; SaysMe, backed by Intel and partnered with Comcast, which enabled individuals to create and run their own political ads on TV; and Sunshine Direct, a DRTV venture that launched celebrity lifestyle brands. She has also built two apps, one called Marble Jar, designed to foster autonomy in children. Lisa grew up in New York City and graduated from Brown University where she received a Ford Foundation Grant in Modern Culture and Media and now serves on Brown’s Arts Advisory Council. She has two children at Wildwood School in Los Angeles and sits on its Board of Trustees.

Justin Schein

Cinematographer

Justin has been shooting and directing character-driven social issue documentaries for 30 years for broadcasters such as HBO, National Geographic, BBC, Discovery and PBS. His feature documentary No Impact Man (2009) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and screened throughout the world. More recently, his film Left On Purpose (2016) won the Grand Prize at the Florida International Film Festival and the Audience Award at Doc NYC. Justin was the lead cinematographer on Crip Camp, the Netflix documentary which won the Audience Award at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Justin received an MA in Documentary Filmmaking from Stanford University and lives in Brooklyn, where he runs Shadowbox Films.

Mary Ann Toman

Editor

Mary Ann Toman is an accomplished documentary and television editor. Credits include Art21’s Peabody Award-winning documentary William Kentridge: Anything is Possible as well as the Emmy-winning series Reel 13 and NYC Arts, both on WNET/Thirteen. Independent documentaries include Soldier’s Stories and the award-winning Losing It. Her film The Female Offender was screened internationally, including New Directors/New Films, The Brooklyn Museum and the Leipzig Documentary Festival.

Anita Yu

Assistant Editor

Anita Hei-Man Yu is a New York-based, multi-faceted assistant editor. After an early career in short-form videos and web series, she transitioned to feature documentary projects. She has assisted on several major feature documentaries, including Academy Award-nominated Strong Island, Academy Award-nominated Hale County This Morning, This Evening, as well as Academy Award Winner documentary short Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if you’re a girl). Aside from assisting, she has executed motion graphics for the feature documentary She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry and The People vs. Agent Orange. Recently, she had the opportunity to co-edit the feature documentary Free Chol Soo Lee, with editors Aldo Velasco and Jean Tsien, which premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. She hopes to continue advancing her experience in the realm of documentary editing.

David Cieri

Composer

David Cieri is a musician and composer and makes music for film, concert, and album release. Cieri has worked extensively with numerous celebrated filmmakers including Ken Burns, the Ewers Brothers, and Barak Goodman. He has recorded nine acclaimed albums under his own name, that last three of which were released by Ropeadope Records. He has collaborated on a major live documentary project with the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage and has made two records with the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa. David wrote and performed the live scores for the first two seasons of The Paris Review podcasts. He teaches courses on Film Scoring, Music for Film, Intro to Music, and Intro to Jazz at The City College of New York.

Martine Phelan-Roberts

Co-Producer

Martine Phelan-Roberts is a documentary producer with a passion for telling powerful stories about real people. Since her time working alongside Eden and Margaret on Chasing Childhood, Martine has produced several documentary series and features, including IDA award-winning Tigre Gente, a vérité investigative thriller about the illegal jaguar trade, the Documentary Group’s youth civic engagement series Divisible / Indivisible, and HBO, Hyperobject and Ample’s upcoming three-part series, The Invisible Pilot. Martine is currently producing a feature with XTR and Optimist films, tentatively titled The Meme Economy: This Is Not Financial Advice. She resides in Santa Monica, California with her fiance and rescue pup.

Kiana Jackson

Associate Producer

Kiana Jackson is an independent producer living and working in New York City. She has worked in documentary for 6 years, producing and developing content for TV, film, and digital platforms; her work has been seen on platforms such as Netflix and PBS. Kiana has always had a passion for honest storytelling and the people who make these stories worth sharing.

Nancy Collet

Festival Strategist

Nancy Collet’s experience in the film industry spans almost 30 years. She left her ten-year tenure as Director of Programming for AFI FEST to launch Cinema Collet. She provides strategic consulting services to independent filmmakers, film festivals, conferences, educators, and distributors. Services include festival and sales strategy for independent films, film festival start-up, programming, large-scale event management, production and marketing and film acquisitions.