ILANA TRACHTMAN

IIlana Trachtman has produced and directed Emmy award-winning nonfiction programs for twenty years, for networks such as PBS, HBO Family, ABC-TV, Showtime, Lifetime, Discovery, A&E, and the Sundance channel. Concerned with bearing witness, Ilana’s work strives for immediate, irresistible human recognition across difference. Ilana’s independent feature documentary, Praying with Lior, about the spirituality and Bar Mitzvah of a boy with Down syndrome, played theatrically in 60 cities in the US and abroad. The film received six Audience Awards for Best Documentary, the Grand Prix at the International Disability Film Festival, and was a critic’s pick of the New York Times. Most recently, Ilana’s film for WHYY, The Pursuit: 50 Years in the Fight for LGBT Rights, was awarded the Mid-Atlantic Emmy for Best Documentary.