Academy Award-nominated director/producer Tia Lessin received the Creative Capital Award for Trouble the Water, a film about survivors of Hurricane Katrina, which was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary feature. Trouble the Water won the Gotham Independent Film Award and Grand Jury Prizes at both the Sundance Film Festival and the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Tia also directed The Janes, a film about the 1960s underground abortion service, which was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, shortlisted for an Oscar, and won three Emmy Awards — Outstanding Documentary, Best Social Issue Documentary and Best Directors — as well as the DuPont Columbia Journalism Award. Both Trouble the Water and The Janes were broadcast on HBO.

Tia also directed and produced Citizen Koch, which documented the rise of the Tea Party in the American Midwest that laid the groundwork for the election of Donald Trump. Citizen Koch premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival, won the Founders Prize at the Traverse City Film Festival, and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. Citizen Koch streamed on Netflix.

Tia was a producer of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, winner of the Palme d’Or, Academy Award ®-winning Bowling for Columbine, Capitalism: A Love Story, Where To Invade Next and Fahrenheit 9/11.

In television, Tia won the Sidney Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism for her directorial debut Behind the Labels, about labor trafficking to U.S. Saipan, produced in partnership with the human rights group WITNESS and broadcast on Oxygen. She line-produced Martin Scorsese’s Grammy-Award winning film No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (American Masters/PBS) and received two primetime Emmy nominations (and one arrest) for her work as producer of the critically-acclaimed television series The Awful Truth (Bravo/BBC).

Tia is a recipient of the Ridenhour Prize, the Women of Worth Vision Award from L’Oréal Paris and Women in Film, The Reel Women Direct Award for Excellence in Directing by a Woman, and the Black Lily Lifetime Achievement Award; her work has been supported by Chicken & Egg Pictures, Cinereach, Creative Capital, Ford Foundation’s JustFilms, Fork Films, The Gotham, Jewish Story Partners, Jewish Filmmaking Institute, the MacArthur Foundation, Kindle Project, Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Polaris Films, Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, The Bertha Foundation, Threshold Foundation and The Fledgling Fund.

An advisor to Sundance Institute Creative Producer Lab, Creative Capital, Sundance Institute Women’s Financing/Strategy Intensive, Independent Feature Project Lab and ReelWorks, Tia was an Open Society Fellow and a Sundance Fellow. She has served on juries at Sundance Film Festival, Full Frame Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival, Newport Film Festival and DOC NYC Film Festival. She is a member of The Directors Guild of America and The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Tia’s work has screened in movie theaters as well as museums and performing arts centers including: American Film Institute, Detroit Institute of Art, Flint Institute of The Arts, Hammer Museum, Harn Museum, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Martin Luther King Center for Non Violent Social Change, McNay Art Museum, Missouri History Museum, Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute, Museum of the African Diaspora, Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, Museum of Modern Art, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Portland Museum of Art, The Paley Center For Media, Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, The Cole Art Center at The Old Opera House, DiverseWorks Art & Performance Center, Downing Film Center, FM Kirby Center for the Performing Arts, George Eastman House, Jacob Burns Film Center, Jarvis Conservatory, Kimball Theatre, Lake Placid Center for the Arts, Marie DeBartolo Center for Performing Arts, Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, Merrimack Hall Performing Arts Center, Robinson Film Center, Southside Film Institute, Stonington Opera House, Symphony Space, Vashon Island Performing Arts Center, Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center,

Tia began her documentary work on the team that made the American Responses exhibit for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Born and raised in Washington, D.C, Tia’s mother and grandmother were Jewish refugees who fled Nazi-occupied Europe and found sanctuary in Trinidad and later in the U.S. Her grandfather was an Auschwitz survivor. Those family experiences have informed questions about survival and resistance that have guided Tia’s filmmaking.

Carl Deal directed and produced the Academy Award-nominated Trouble the Water with collaborator Tia Lessin. He co-produced Capitalism: A Love Story in 2009, was a producer of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, and has contributed to many other documentary films. Previously, he worked as a freelance journalist and news producer for Worldwide Television News and the European Broadcasting Union and has reported from disasters and conflict zones throughout North America, Latin America and Iraq. Deal has also documented civil and human rights abuses for several NGOs, among them Amnesty International, Greenpeace and Public Citizen. He holds an MS in journalism from Columbia University, which awarded him the Sander Social Justice Award.