Fellowships
MacArthur Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellow
USA Rockefeller Fellow
Sundance Institute Lab Fellow
Tribeca Film Institute Media Arts
NYU Center on Law & Security
Wexner Center for the Arts
Awards
Academy Award nominee
Emmy Award nominee
Peabody Award winner
Gotham Award winner
Independent Spirit Award nominee
True/Vision Award, True/False
Directing Award, Cinema Eye
Sundance Cinematography Award
Lincoln Center Segal Award
Laura Poitras
Laura Poitras is working on a trilogy of films about America post 9/11. The first film, MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY (2006), was nominated for an Academy Award, Independent Spirit Award, and Emmy Award. The second film, THE OATH (2010), received a Gotham Award for Best Documentary, the Cinematography Award at Sundance, and the Directing Award at Cinema Eye Honors. She is currently working on the third film of the trilogy.
The 9/11 Trilogy was selected for the 2012 Whitney Biennial. She is the recipient of a 2012 MacArthur Fellowship.
Her video installation, O’SAY CAN YOU SEE (2011), premiered at the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center and had its New York premiere at the Ronald Feldman Gallery.
Poitras received a Peabody Award and an Independent Spirit Award nomination for FLAG WARS (2003), a film made with Linda Goode Bryant. She is executive producer of Ra’anan Alexandrovicz’ THE LAW IN THESE PARTS (2011), winner of the Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Jury Prize.
Her films has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, IDFA, SXSW, Edinburgh Film Festival, and New Directors/New Films at MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Her work has received support from ITVS, the Sundance Institute, Vital Projects Fund, Creative Capital, American Documentary|POV, the Tribeca Film Institute, and the Bertha BRITDOC Documentary Journalism Fund. Her films are distributed by Zeitgeist Films.
She has attended the Sundance Institute Documentary Storytelling Lab as both a fellow and creative advisor. She has taught documentary filmmaking at Yale University, and is currently a visiting artist at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. She is a board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Before making films she worked as a professional chef.