Meet The Filmmakers
Director and Director of Photography
Patrick Bresnan
Using precise, illustrative cinematic images, Patrick Bresnan makes vérité stories that counter the mythic concepts of America. He directed The Rabbit Hunt, which premiered in the US at Sundance and in Europe at the Berlinale. The film won over 20 awards, including the Cinema Eye Honor. He co-directed the short Skip Day, which won the Grand Jury Prize at The Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. He co-directed, shot, and produced the feature film Pahokee, which premiered in competition at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. His subsequent feature, Naked Gardens, premiered at Tribeca in 2022 and internationally at IDFA. He was a cinematographer on the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, Boys State.
Editor
Ivete Lucas
Ivete was born in Brazil, grew up in Mexico, and lives and works in the American South. Her films have premiered at Cannes, Berlin, Locarno, Toronto, and Sundance. Her work has earned over thirty film festival awards, including the Short Film Award at the Cannes Director's Fortnight for Skip Day (2018), the Pardino d'Oro at Locarno for The Passing (2023) and a Cinema Eye Award for The Rabbit Hunt (2017). Her collection of short films has been distributed by ARTE, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Guardian. Her first feature film, Pahokee (2019), about a small town in the Florida Everglades, premiered at Sundance and played over fifty festivals worldwide. It was distributed theatrically in France and the US and broadcast on PBS.
New College Alum, Producer, Camera Operator
Harry William Hanbury
Harry William Hanbury is a writer and filmmaker who was on the founding team of producers of two investigative journalism nonprofits: the American News Project and Retro Report, a partnership with the New York Times. He has also produced for Discovery, six Hollywood studios, and dozens of nonprofits. He has an M.A. from Hunter College and taught world and U.S. history at Hunter College High School and King School.
New College Alum Cinematographer
Daniel Potthast
Daniel is a technical artist and videographer working across cinematography, archival research, and field production. He served as an embedded collaborator on the film, documenting campus life over an extended period and contributing to its vérité visual approach through long-form observational filming and on-the-ground production support. His prior work includes visual effects contributions to No Real Than You Are and live video performance collaborations with musicians King Britt and Tim Motzer for the Sister Gertrude Morgan Project. This film marks his first feature documentary.
Executive Producer
Steve Phillips
Steve Phillips is a national political leader, bestselling author, and columnist. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority, the national bestseller How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good, and the new book Are White Men Smarter Than Everyone Else? He hosts the podcast Democracy in Color.
Co-producer
Monique Walton
Monique is an independent producer. She is the 2024 recipient of the Film Independent Spirit Awards Producers Award. Walton’s films include Sing Sing (dir. Greg Kwedar), which premiered at TIFF in 2023, and Bull (dir. Annie Silverstein), which premiered at Cannes – Un Certain Regard in 2019. She produced the feature documentary Hollow Tree (dir. Kira Akerman), which premiered at the New Orleans Film Festival. Walton was a 2016 Sundance Creative Producing Fellow, a 2020 Rotterdam Producing Fellow, and a 2021 Cannes-Producers Network Fellow.
Editor
Leah Marino
Leah Marino is an Austin-based documentary editor with over 25 years of experience shaping award-winning films. Her recent work includes Patrick Bresnan’s First They Came for My College (True/False, SXSW 2026). She is a frequent collaborator with Kim Hopkins, editing Still Pushing Pineapples (Sheffield Doc/Fest opening night 2025), A Bunch of Amateurs (Sheffield Audience Award winner; BAFTA long-list), and Voices of the Sea (True/False; POV; Best Documentary, NYLFF). She edited five films with Ramona Diaz, including A Thousand Cuts (Emmy Award; Peabody Award; Gotham Award), Motherland (Sundance Commanding Vision Award; Independent Spirit Award nomination), Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey, The Learning, and Imelda. Additional credits include Deborah Esquenazi’s Southwest of Salem (Peabody Award; Emmy nomination), John Fiege’s Above All Else (SXSW, Best North American Documentary, Global Visions Film Festival), and Ray Santisteban’s The First Rainbow Coalition (Independent Lens). She was inducted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2019.
New College Alum, Producer
Holly Herrick
Holly Herrick is a seasoned executive in the film non-profit sector, and currently serves Head of Film & Creative Media at Austin Film Society where she has overseen more than $2M in grant funds to filmmakers, established successful talent development programs that have launched major film careers, and helped launch the AFS Cinema, Austin’s only non-profit arthouse. Herrick’s background is in film programming and artist support, and she has served in producing roles on independent features that have premiered at Sundance, Rotterdam, and SXSW.
Producer
Zackary Drucker
Zackary Drucker is an Emmy-nominated director for the HBO Original documentary The Stroll (2023) and an Emmy-nominated producer for the docuseries This Is Me (2015). She was a producer on the Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning Amazon show Transparent (2014 - 2019), and produced the feature film Biosphere with Mark Duplass & Sterling K. Brown (Duplass Brothers Productions / IFC, 2022). The Lady and The Dale, her 4-part series and directorial debut for television, premiered on HBO in 2021 and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award in 2022. In addition to being nominated for Best Documentary at the News + Docs Emmy Awards, The Stroll won a Peabody Award in 2024 and a Special Jury Award: Clarity of Vision at Sundance 2023. Her standalone directorial feature Queenmaker: The Making of an It Girl was released on Hulu in May 2023. Her latest documentary feature, Enigma, debuted at Sundance 2025.
Executive Producer
Kim A. Snyder
Kim A. Snyder's latest film, The Librarians (2025 film), is now out in theaters, has garnered over 20 festival awards, and had its US TV broadcast on PBS's Independent Lens in February 2026. Her short documentary Death by Numbers was nominated for a 2025 Academy Award. She made her directorial debut with the 2000 documentary I Remember Me. In 2016, Snyder won the Crested Butte Film Festival ACTNow award for Newtown and was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize in Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival.
Executive Producer
Margaret Brown
Margaret Brown’s documentary work examines the American South, from her seminal film on Townes Van Zandt Be Here to Love Me, to the story of the BP oil spill’s lasting impact The Great Invisible, which won the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW in 2014. Her film The Order of Myths, which examined Brown’s native Mobile, Alabama and its still segregated Mardi Gras celebration, won numerous awards including a Peabody and the Truer Than Fiction Independent Spirit Award. Her most recent film Descendant won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at Sundance in 2022 and was acquired by the Obamas’ Higher Ground Productions. Descendant also won the DOC NYC Award for Best Director, the Critics Choice Documentary Award for Best Historical Documentary, and was named to the Oscars shortlist for Best Documentary Feature. The film also received nominations for outstanding direction, best documentary feature, and outstanding original score from Cinema Eye Honors, the Producers’ Guild of America, and the NAACP Awards. It explores the story of the only known slave ship that’s ever been discovered on North American soil, the specter of its crimes both past and present, and the steadfast resilience of Africatown’s descendants in the face of a century of denied history. Brown has also done short form work for The New York Times, Field of Vision, and episodic work for Netflix, including an episode of the acclaimed series Dirty Money.
Executive Producer
Heather Courtney
Heather is an Emmy-winning filmmaker and a Guggenheim, Sundance, and Fulbright fellow. Her documentary films have won an Emmy, an Independent Spirit Award, an IDA Award, and numerous festival jury awards, including at SXSW, Full Frame, the Philadelphia Film Fest, and the Traverse City Film Festival. She has been supported by the Sundance Documentary Fund, Ford Foundation Just Films, ITVS, Impact Partners, Chicken & Egg, the Sundance Edit and Story Lab, and the United States Artists Fellowship, among others.