Rachel Beth Anderson
Rachel Beth Anderson is a Sundance award-winning documentary filmmaker based in Brooklyn. Her most recent film, Great Photo, Lovely Life, premiered at SXSW in 2023. This HBO original documentary chronicles a granddaughter’s attempt to disrupt a cycle of intergenerational trauma through the voices of the survivors and the grandfather himself. Rolling Stone wrote, “The truth Great Photo exposes…removes a cloak of silence, complicity, and fear, one painful but cathartic frame at a time.” Anderson directed and filmed this eight-year cinematic journey, which won the Special Jury prize for raising awareness at the Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF), and was nominated by the International Documentary Association (IDA) for Best TV Feature. Great Photo, Lovely Life is available to stream on HBO Max.
Her other directorial credits include the feature film Unschooled (2019), which premiered at DOC NYC, and won the 2020 Prix D’or Best of Fest at the Lower East Side Film Festival. A character-driven film keenly examining the racial and class disparities within the education system, it offers a unique perspective through the lens of alternative school choices.
Anderson’s directorial debut, First to Fall (2014), garnered international praise and was broadcast on BBC’s Storyville Global. Embedded in Libya for 8 months, Anderson’s distinctive approach allowed her to capture footage and stories that eluded other reporters. Living among her subjects, she developed an intimate connection, cultivating a level of trust that paved the way for the film’s unparalleled insights. Eye for Film wrote, “[the film is] a nod towards an uncertain future and a disillusionment…What has changed in Libya remains debatable but these men’s lives have been irrevocably altered.” Premiering at IDFA, the film won two grand jury awards at the investigative journalism festival FIGRA in France, and was featured at the Bayeux-Calvados Award for War Correspondents. First to Fall is available to stream on Amazon Prime.
Residing in Cairo, Anderson immersed herself in capturing the social and political complexities of North Africa and the Middle East when the Arab Spring erupted. The upheaval prompted her to cover conflicts in the region, tracing the revolutions from Egypt, to Libya, to Syria. This led to Anderson working on over 20 films for the award-winning PBS Frontline investigative documentary series during the following decade, as well as the acclaimed feature film, E-Team (2014). Of E-Team, The Washington Post wrote, “the film, which plunges viewers directly into the often dangerous action, deservedly won [Anderson] a cinematography award at the Sundance Film Festival.”
Anderson is originally from North Dakota and received a degree in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Nebraska. Most recently DOCNYC named her on their 2023, 40 Under 40 list, and she is currently directing a multi-part documentary series for Netflix.