Bios

Isabelle Carbonell
Director/Cinematographer/Editor

Isabelle Carbonell is a documentary photographer and documentary filmmaker whose determination to give a voice to the voiceless has driven her to document political, social, ethnographic, and environmental stories around the world. When filming, she becomes her environment — sleeping, eating, and breathing with those she is focusing on, absorbing their culture, transcending the divide between observer and subject easily. With all the ambitions of an artist, she also employs her rigorous academic training as a researcher to produce an in–depth reportage.

Isabelle also recently taught documentary filmmaking to a class of software designers and engineers at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.

Unique in her perspectives and methods, she also comes from a wide cultural background as half-Belgian and half-Uruguayan. Based out of Washington D.C. and Brussels, Belgium, she graduated from the Residential College at the University of Michigan with degrees in Environmental and Social Science, Photography and Filmmaking. Her documentary skills have taken her to countries such as India, Qatar, Cuba, Mexico, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Nepal, Kazakhstan, and Nicaragua.

Olivia Abtahi
Contributing Editor

Olivia hails from Washington, DC. Born to an Iranian father and an Argentine mother, Olivia is a melting pot of clashing cultures. She is a BFA Honors graduate of NYU’s school for Film and Television, and enjoys comedic and experimental short films, especially music videos, and of course documentaries.

Dan Neumann
Contributing Editor

Dan Neumann is a video journalist from Illinois that has reported on climate change, aid & development, refugees & gender issues in Africa. He lived among Fulani herdsmen for two years in a small village in The Gambia, West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer before going on to report from places like the DRC, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya. His reportage has strived to make the exotic seem local, by focusing on the universal ways communities organize to solve problems.

Sarah Cannon
Contributing Editor

Sarah hails from the Midwest (Shaker Heights, Ohio) and now happily resides in Washington DC (LeDroit Park). She produces, shoots, and edits videos for broadcast and internet distribution. She prefers the internet.

While not staring intently at her computer, Sarah cooks, eats, surfs, and watches Apple trailers.