Nancy Schwartzman is an Emmy winning and Peabody nominated documentary filmmaker and a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences.
She is the Director and Executive Producer of the 5-part original documentary series Sasha Reid and the Midnight Order for Freeform/Hulu and Disney+ with XTR Studios. The show features a diverse cast of young women pooling their talents to fight violence against women and bring justice to victims. Sasha Reid and the Midnight Order debuted #3 on Hulu its first week. She is the winner of the Women’s Image Award for Best Direction of a Series.
Her recent Netflix original feature, Victim/Suspect, won an Emmy award and was nominated for 3, including for Outstanding Direction, Outstanding Investigative Documentary and Outstanding Research. Victim/Suspect is the winner of the RFK Journalism prize, nominated for the U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival in 2023 and the F:ACT Award at CPH: Dox. Victim/Suspect follows an Investigative journalist as she travels nationwide to uncover and examine a shocking pattern: young women tell the police they’ve been sexually assaulted, but instead of finding justice, they’re charged with the crime of making a false report, arrested, and even imprisoned. Produced with Netflix with the Center for Investigative Reporting and Motto Pictures, the film premiered on Netflix to 190 countries on May 23, 2023 and trended #6 in the United States, and in the top #10 globally in 28 countries. It is currently the #7 Documentary viewed on Netflix.
Her debut feature documentary Roll Red Roll (PBS/BBC/Netflix) was nominated for a Peabody award, and exposed the notorious Steubenville, Ohio high school sexual assault case and uncovered the social-media fueled "boys will be boys" culture that let it happen. Roll Red Roll garnered 7 best documentary awards, premiered in 2018 at the Tribeca Film Festival and Hot Docs, and has screened at over 40 film festivals worldwide. The film opened theatrically with 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. It was a Critic's Pick in The New York Times and reviewed in The New Yorker, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times amongst others.
As a follow up to the documentary, she is the author of the non-fiction book Roll Red Roll: Rape, Power and Football in the American Heartland released in July 2022 with Hachette and received stellar reviews from the New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus and Library Journal. This is a deep dive into the Steubenville, Ohio case and a follow-up from the award-winning film.
Her short films including One Shot One Kill, for Mother Jones (2020) and Anonymous Comes To Town (2019), co-produced with the Tribeca Film Institute and Gucci's Chime for Change, xoxosms and The Line. Together, they have garnered over 5 million views.
For her human rights filmmaking and technology development to prevent sexual violence, she is the winner of awards from the Obama/Biden White House, the United Nations and the Avon Foundation. She is a tech founder and created the Circle of 6 safety app.
She is represented by UTA, a graduate of Columbia University and based in Los Angeles.