Favela Rising was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Feature Length Documentary in 2005, and among the 36 international awards it has won are Film of the Year by the International Documentary Association, Best Film at the Sydney International Film Festival and Leeds International Film Festival, as well as Best Director at the Tribeca Film Festival. Favela Rising was theatrically exhibited in five continents, held over in theaters in the United Kingdom for six months, and theatrically released by ThinkFilm and HBO in 34 cities in North America. Favela Rising was also nominated for a 2007 Emmy Award.
Jeff Zimbalist
Director / Producer / Cinematographer / Editor
Jeff is an Emmy and Peabody Award winning writer, director, and editor whose films have been broadcast on HBO, MTV, PBS, ESPN, CBS, Channel 4 UK, the BBC and BET, as well as theatrically distributed worldwide.
In 2010, alongside his brother, Jeff co-directed, co-produced, and co-wrote THE TWO ESCOBARS, which internationally premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, has won numerous international festival awards and was theatrically released and broadcast in over 20 countries by Disney/ESPN, won 4 Gold Medals in the New York Film and TV awards, and was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Documentary, as well as the Writer's Guild of America's Best Nonfiction Script of 2010. Since, the Zimbalist brothers have directed two other entries into the ESPN 30for30 series, ARNOLD'S BLUEPRINT, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and YOUNGSTOWN BOYS, which won an Emmy in 2014. In 2011, Jeff's film BOLLYWOOD: THE GREATEST LOVE STORY EVER TOLD premiered as an official selection of the Cannes Film Festival, and was sold worldwide by Wild Bunch.
In 2015, Jeff and Michael wrote and directed PELÉ, a scripted feature film produced by Academy Award winner Brian Grazer, which premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival and was a box office hit theatrically worldwide. Jeff and Michael's production company, All Rise Films, is a Ford Foundation grant recipient and has produced award-winning documentaries on third world development issues for clients such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the SEVEN Fund and the John Templeton Foundation. They have also worked with entertainment icons such as Will Smith, Quincy Jones, Jim Brown, Shakira, Russell Simmons, Mick Jagger, Javier Bardem, Naomi Campbell, Aishwarya Rai, and Amitabh Bachchan in the development of original content.
Jeff graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 2000.
Matt Mochary
Director / Producer / Co-Cinematographer
Matt is a new filmmaker. FAVELA RISING is his first piece of co-direction and production. Before FAVELA RISING, Matt was a Partner at Spectrum Equity Investors, the founder and Chairman of Totality Corporation, the Chairman of AEKus Properties, and the founder of The Mochary Foundation, a charitable organization that promotes public education, www.mochary.org. Matt received his BA from Yale University and his MBA from Kellogg at Northwestern University.