RACHEL LEARS

Rachel Lears is a documentary director, producer and cinematographer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her most recent feature documentary, Knock Down the House (Netflix), follows four women who ran insurgent congressional campaigns in 2018, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush. The film won the US Documentary Audience Award and the Festival Favorite award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, was shortlisted for an Oscar and nominated for an Emmy in 2020. Her last feature, The Hand That Feeds (co-directed with Robin Blotnick; PBS), won numerous festival awards and was nominated for an Emmy in 2017. Rachel received the IDA Emerging Filmmaker Award in 2019, and also holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from NYU.

Rachel Lears writing, music and photography projects

SELECTED filmography

director / producer / cinematographer

To The End

Stopping the climate crisis is a question of political courage, and the clock is ticking. Over three years of turbulence and crisis, four remarkable young women of color fight for a Green New Deal and ignite a historic shift in US climate politics.

Knock Down The House

Four working class women run for Congress, overcoming adversity to battle powerful political machines in very different American landscapes. One of their races will change the country forever.

The Hand That Feeds

(2014) Shy sandwich-maker Mahoma Lopez unites his undocumented immigrant coworkers to fight abusive conditions at a popular New York restaurant chain. The epic power struggle that ensues turns a single city block into a battlefield in America’s new wage wars.

Birds of Passage

(2009) A lyrical journey through the creative process and the everyday struggles of two young songwriters in Uruguay.

Ethnography of No Place / Empathics

(2008-2014) A series of mock documentaries about an imaginary, feminist, do-it-yourself utopia.

CINEMATOGRAPHER

Netizens

Feature documentary directed by Cynthia Lowen (Bully, 2011)

NETIZENS follows targets of online harassment as they confront digital abuse and strive for equality and justice online.