Julia Bacha


Julia Bacha is a Brazilian documentary filmmaker.

Background

Bacha was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. When she was 17 she moved to the US to study Middle Eastern history and politics at Columbia University. She got accepted to Tehran University for a Master's degree but could not acquire a visa, and instead went to Cairo to work on a documentary, Control Room. In 2003, she graduated from the Columbia University School of General Studies.

Career

Bacha has strategically used film to highlight under documented stories from the Middle East.
In 2004, she was the co-writer and editor of Control Room, a documentary about Al Jazeera. Bacha and Noujaim received a nomination for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Documentary Screenplay for the film. Two years later, she co-directed the documentary Encounter Point, which was the official selection at Tribeca Film Festival, Hot Docs, Jerusalem Film Festival, Vancouver International Film Festival and San Francisco International Film Festivals, where it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary. Bacha directed the 2009 documentary Budrus, which was shown at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival and became runner up in the festival's documentary competition. Budrus won over 18 international prizes, including the 2012 PUMA Creative.Impact Award, a prize given to the documentary film that had the greatest impact on society in any given year. In 2013, her 2012 film My Neighbourhood won the Peabody Award and premiered online at The Guardian. In 2014, it won a Special Mention at the Social Impact Media Awards. On November 12, 2017, her latest film, Naila and the Uprising, premiered at the DOC NYC filmfestival.
By 2006, Bacha had become creative director at the non-profit Just Vision.

Filmography