Tell us about your organization. How big is your team? Where are you based? What is your organization’s specialty in the film and video space?
I am an indie filmmaker based in New York City. I specialize in telling true stories that sit at the intersection of crime, justice, and the human experience. I’m especially drawn to stories about people who have been failed by the systems that were supposed to protect them.
What interests me most is not just what happened, but what it felt like to live through it. I want the audience to meet the person behind the headline and understand the emotional cost of what happened to them.
My goal is to make complicated issues feel personal and accessible. If someone finishes one of my films thinking, “That could have been me, or someone I love,” then I feel like I’ve done my job.
Why do you do what you do? Was there a transformative moment that solidified your career choice, your org’s success, or your commitment to storytelling?
I came to filmmaking through advocacy.
After hearing the first couple of episodes of the Serial podcast, I became convinced that Adnan Syed’s case deserved a closer look. I started advocating publicly for his innocence and created “Free Adnan” T-shirts that unexpectedly went viral around the world. I then organized the first legal defense fundraising event for Adnan, which brought me into his world in a much more personal way. I met his mother, his brothers, Rabia Chaudry, and many of the family members and friends who had lived with the case for years.
Then, in 2016, I sat in the courtroom during Adnan’s post-conviction hearing. Watching the process firsthand was transformative. I was struck by how much the case seemed to be about winning rather than finding the truth. Seeing that dynamic up close made me realize how different the justice system can look when you are actually sitting inside the courtroom.
Around that same time, shows like Making a Murderer and The Jinx were reaching huge audiences. I started thinking about the power of film to bring public attention to wrongful convictions and the people caught up in them.
That was the moment I decided I wanted to tell these stories myself. I enrolled in film school and began making films about people whose stories either needed public attention or whose stories could help educate the public.
That path ultimately led me to Jeffrey Deskovic and Sixteen Years. What started with one case opened my eyes to a much larger problem, and filmmaking gave me a way to keep asking the questions that first drew me to Adnan’s story: What happens when the system gets it wrong, and who is willing to fight to make it right?
Tell us about your Telly Award winning piece. What’s the story behind it?
Sixteen Years tells the story of Jeffrey Deskovic, who was just 16 years old when he was wrongfully convicted of raping and murdering a classmate. He spent the next 16 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
The story found me at a time when I was already becoming deeply interested in wrongful convictions because of my experience advocating for Adnan Syed. I had seen firsthand how difficult it could be for someone to challenge a conviction, even when serious questions remained about the case. I knew Adnan’s experience wasn’t an isolated one, it was something much bigger.
When I learned about Jeffrey’s case, I was struck by how many layers there were to it. This wasn’t simply a story about a wrongful conviction. It was about what happens to a person when the system decides it has the right answer and then becomes more invested in defending that answer than questioning it.
What stayed with me most was Jeffrey himself. He was a teenager when his life was taken away from him, and when he finally walked out of prison, he had to figure out how to build a life in a world that had completely changed while he was gone.
I wanted the film to make that loss tangible. It’s unfathomable to comprehend what it means to lose 16 birthdays, 16 years with your family, relationships, opportunities, and the simple experience of growing up.
Ultimately, Sixteen Years is about much more than one case. It’s about what happens when the pursuit of a conviction becomes more important than the pursuit of truth. And it’s about the extraordinary resilience of someone who had every reason to give up, but chose to keep fighting…and then continue to fight for others. It restored my faith in humanity.
Can you share a behind the scenes story or fun fact about the making of your piece?
One of the most difficult days of making Sixteen Years happened when I asked Jeff to listen to the audio recording of his interrogation from when he was 16 years old.
I knew the recording was important to the story, but I was not prepared for what happened when he heard his younger self being questioned. He had a mental breakdown, that I was not prepared for. At one point, he looked at me and asked if I was a real person or a figment of his imagination.
He started asking if he was actually still in prison and whether, as a way of coping with that unbearable reality, he had imagined me and imagined that a movie was being made about his life. It was frightening, and honestly, I didn’t know how to handle it in the moment.
That experience changed me as a filmmaker. I realized that when you are telling stories about trauma, you are not just capturing someone else’s pain for an audience. You have a responsibility to the person sitting in front of your camera. These are real people carrying experiences that most of us cannot begin to understand.
Looking back, I wish I had had a trauma therapist on set who could have helped us navigate that moment. It taught me that these stories need to be approached with an enormous amount of care, and that the emotional safety of the people telling them has to come before the film.
The strength of Jeff, and of so many people who have survived wrongful convictions, is both heartbreaking and almost impossible to comprehend. They lose years of their lives and then somehow find the strength to keep going.
That day reminded me that making a film about someone else’s trauma is a privilege, and one that comes with a huge responsibility.
What was your biggest challenge during production and how did you solve it?
Our biggest challenge has been finding distribution for a story centered on advocacy that can be difficult to watch. It’s painful to see what happened to Jeff as a 16-year-old, especially knowing that so much of his suffering was caused by the very system and people who were supposed to protect him.
We’ve addressed that challenge by building a strategic impact campaign around educational screenings at colleges and universities, nonprofit partnerships, and community organizations focused on criminal justice reform. The film has screened internationally, including in the Netherlands and Canada, with an upcoming screening in Taiwan.
These impact screenings have become an important part of the film’s release strategy while we finalize its next phase of distribution. More importantly, they’ve allowed the film to reach communities that are already engaged in these issues and continue the conversation about wrongful convictions around the world.
What are you most proud of about this piece? What is the most memorable response you got from this work?
What I’m most proud of is that Jeff feels the film is an accurate and meaningful depiction of his life. As a documentarian, that is the highest compliment I could receive. His story belongs to him, and knowing that he feels we treated it with honesty and care means everything to me.
The other thing I’m incredibly proud of is the response from audiences. At every screening, people come up afterward deeply moved, and often wanting to do something. Seeing someone go from watching a film to feeling compelled to become an advocate is incredibly meaningful, and the reason I went into filmmaking in the first place.
The most memorable response came from a cold email. I sent the film to someone (I won’t name) who has worked with Oprah Winfrey for decades, never knowing if she would even see it. She not only watched it, she called me personally and told me she loved the film and wanted to work together. I will never forget that call.
You won a Telly Award for this piece. Why is recognition important for you, your team or your work?
Winning a Telly Award was incredibly rewarding because Sixteen Years was born out of sheer passion, both for the cause and for the art of filmmaking.
We made this film with a very small crew and limited resources, so to have it recognized by the Telly Awards and their judges alongside work from major organizations and production houses means a great deal to me.
For me, the recognition is also meaningful because it validates the idea that a small team with a story they deeply believe in can create work that stands alongside much larger productions. It gives the film another opportunity to reach people who might not otherwise encounter Jeff’s story, and that is ultimately what matters most to me.
Tell us what you’re up to! If there’s a new project, launch, or milestone you’d like us to celebrate with you, let us know, and we might share it with our community.
I’m incredibly excited to share that I just signed a book deal with Bloomsbury. The book is coming out next year and will blend true crime, memoir, and investigative reporting to examine the devastating human cost of wrongful convictions and the systemic failures that can steal years, and sometimes entire lives.
The book grows directly out of my work as a filmmaker. While making Sixteen Years and reporting on other wrongful conviction cases, I began to see patterns that went far beyond any single case. Filmmaking gave me a front-row seat to the shortcomings of the American justice system, and the book gives me the opportunity to explore those failures in much greater depth.
I’m excited to tell a story that is both deeply personal and investigative.
