Heidi Ewing

Heidi Ewing
Heidi Ewing at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival
OccupationFilmmaker
Known forObservational filmmaking.

Heidi Ewing is an American documentary filmmaker and the co-director of Jesus Camp, The Boys of Baraka, 12th & Delaware, DETROPIA, Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, One of Us, Love Fraud (series), I Carry You With Me (narrative) and Endangered.

Biography

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Ewing is a native of the Detroit area. She was introduced to film by her father who encouraged her and her siblings to watch Fellini films at a young age. But it was her exposure to Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" at the age of ten that had the greatest impact. "It blew my mind into thousands of pieces, and I couldn't stop going back to see it over and over again," she says. "I didn't know something could be so potent."[1]

Ewing graduated of Mercy High School[2] and then attended and graduated from the Georgetown University.[3]

In 2001 she and Rachel Grady founded Loki Films in New York.[4]

Her first film as a director was the short "Dissident: Oswaldo Paya and The Varela Project," a short film financed by the National Democratic Institute [5] about the now deceased activist and his efforts to push for human rights in Cuba.

Her first feature-length documentary, "The Boys of Baraka," was co-directed with Rachel Grady. The film, made with ITVS, premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival and was release theatrically by ThinkFilm before airing on PBS.[6] The film follows a group of 12-year-old boys from Baltimore who leave home for an experimental middle school in rural Kenya.[7]

In 2006 she and Grady released "Jesus Camp," which premiered at The Tribeca Film Festival and was released by Magnolia Pictures.[8] The film was nominated for the 2006 Academy Award.[9]

In 2011 she returned to her native Detroit to make "DETROPIA," an impressionistic documentary that focuses on the challenges of a shrinking city and those who refuse to give up on it.[10] The film premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and won the editing award [11]

In 2017 she co-directed Netflix Original film, "One of Us," which follows three Hasidic Jews who attempt to leave the insular community and pursue a secular life. The film premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. Ewing appeared on Charlie Rose in October 2017 to discuss the film and said that Hasidic Jews died disproportionally in the Holocaust because they "refused to blend in". She later apologized.[12]

Ewing made her narrative debut in 2020 with "I Carry You With Me," a love story based on her two close friends, Ivan and Gerardo, who had emigrated to the United States from a conservative town in Mexico. The film began as a documentary, but over the course of the process Ewing realized it was best presented as a narrative film with non-fiction elements woven through.[13] The film made its world premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival where it won the jury and audiences awards in the festival's NEXT section. The film was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards and was released by Sony Pictures Classics in 2021.

Ewing recently co-directed "Endangered," a film for HBO on the silencing of journalists around the world.

Filmography

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Film Year Subject matter Notes
The Boys of Baraka 2005 Baraka School, Kenya
Jesus Camp 2006 Kids On Fire School of Ministry, Becky Fischer
The Lord's Boot Camp 2008 Teen Missions International Produced and aired for 48 Hours
Freakonomics (segment "Can You Bribe a 9th Grader to Succeed?") 2010 2005 book of the same name
12th & Delaware 2010 A crisis pregnancy center and an abortion clinic in Fort Pierce, Florida
Detropia 2012 Detroit, Michigan [14]
The Education of Mohammad Hussein 2012
Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You 2016 Norman Lear
A Dream Preferred 2016 Taharka Bros.
One of Us 2017 Four former members of the Hasidic Jewish community.
I Carry You With Me 2020 Narrative film
Love Fraud 2020 True crime documentary miniseries revolves around Richard Scott Smith, who used the internet to prey upon women in search of love and conned them
Endangered 2022 An investigation of threats against journalists in the United States and internationally, from intimidation to physical violence.

References

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  1. ^ Graham, Adam. "Metro Detroiter Heidi Ewing mixes styles with 'I Carry You With Me'". The Detroit News. Retrieved January 30, 2023.
  2. ^ "September 2012 | Mercy High School". Archived from the original on April 15, 2013. Retrieved December 31, 2012.
  3. ^ "SPOTLIGHT July, 2021: Heidi Ewing on Nonfiction, Partnership and I CARRY YOU WITH ME – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS". Retrieved January 30, 2023.
  4. ^ "Loki Films". Retrieved January 30, 2023.
  5. ^ jbowen (July 14, 2008). "Dissident: Oswaldo Payá and the Varela Project". www.ndi.org. Retrieved January 30, 2023.
  6. ^ POV (January 23, 2006). "Film Description | The Boys of Baraka | POV | PBS". POV | American Documentary Inc. Retrieved January 30, 2023.
  7. ^ Ebert, Roger. "The Boys of Baraka movie review (2006) | Roger Ebert". www.rogerebert.com/. Retrieved January 30, 2023.
  8. ^ Holden, Stephen (September 22, 2006). "Children's Boot Camp for the Culture Wars". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 30, 2023.
  9. ^ Jesus Camp (2006) - IMDb, retrieved January 30, 2023
  10. ^ "Detropia | Reinventing Detroit | Independent Lens | PBS". Independent Lens. Retrieved January 30, 2023.
  11. ^ "2012 Sundance Film Festival Announces Awards - sundance.org". January 29, 2012. Retrieved January 30, 2023.
  12. ^ "Director apologizes for Holocaust statement about Hasidic Jews". The Times of Israel. JTA. October 24, 2017. Retrieved January 2, 2019.
  13. ^ Aguilar, Carlos (June 25, 2021). "How a story of love, loss and cooking became the immigration tale 'I Carry You With Me'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 30, 2023.
  14. ^ Jenkins, Mark (September 13, 2012). "Rachel Grady, Heidi Ewing show Detroit as ghost town in 'Detropia'". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on April 12, 2013. Retrieved March 22, 2013.
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