Film Forum

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) is a non-profit organization that protects and defends press freedom in the 21st century. FPF builds secure communications tools, trains reporters on digital security, systematically documents press freedom violations in the United States, and advocates for strong First Amendment rights for all journalists.

Laura Poitras is an Academy Award® and Pulitzer Prize-winning filmmaker and journalist. Her last film, ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED, premiered at the 2022 Venice International Film Festival where it won the Golden Lion for best film. The story of groundbreaking artist Nan Goldin, the film was nominated for an Academy Award® and BAFTA, and won an Independent Spirit Award. Poitras’ film CITIZENFOUR won an Academy Award® for Best Documentary, along with awards from BAFTA and DGA. Her journalism exposing the National Security Agency’s global mass surveillance programs received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, as well as the George Polk award for National Security Reporting. Her Academy Award®-nominated film MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY, the first film in her post-9/11 Trilogy, documented the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The Whitney Museum of American Art exhibited her first solo show of film installations, Astro Noise, in 2016. She is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow. She has also received a Peabody Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, and grants from the Sundance Institute, Creative Capital, Vital Projects Fund, Cinereach, and others. In 2006, the U.S. government placed her on a terrorist watchlist and afterward detained and interrogated her dozens of times at the U.S. border.

Mark Obenhaus is a Producer, Writer and Director of documentary films. His work has been awarded five national Emmys, the British Press Guild Documentary Award, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, two Robert Kennedy Journalism awards, the Writers Guild of America Award, four American Film Festival Awards, and numerous other honors. Among his credits are The Age of Aerospace (8 part series) for the Discovery Channel; STEEP, a theatrical feature released by Sony Pictures Classics. His work produced in association with ABC News includes Dangerous World: The Kennedy Years, The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy, UFOs: Seeing Is Believing as well as numerous other projects made in collaboration with Peter Jennings. His work for Public Television includes seven programs for the PBS series Frontline; for Great Performances, he produced and directed Miles Ahead: The Music of Miles Davis and Einstein on the Beach. For The American Experience, he produced and directed The World That Moses Built and Mr. Sears Catalog.

Yoni Golijov is an Independent Spirit and Peabody Award-winning producer. Previous to COVER-UP, he produced ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED directed by Laura Poitras. The film was nominated for the Academy Award® and BAFTA, and won the Golden Lion for Best Film at Venice. Golijov has received fellowships from Sundance, Impact Partners, The Gotham, and NBC Original Voices.



Trevor Timm is a co-founder and the executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation. He is a journalist, activist, and legal analyst whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, USA Today, The Atlantic, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Harvard Law & Policy Review, and Politico. Trevor formerly worked as an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Before that, he helped the longtime general counsel of The New York Times, James Goodale, write the book, Fighting for the Press, on the Pentagon Papers and the First Amendment. He received his J.D. from New York Law School. In 2013, he received the Hugh Hefner First Amendment Award for journalism.

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