
From 2008-2015, Justine led Kartemquin Films as Executive Director as well as being an Executive Producer on each new film. She was responsible, in concert with the Board of Directors, for creating and implementing the strategic vision for Kartemquin. Justine successfully transitioned to the ED role in a historic founder-led organization, and made major strides in building a foundation for long-term sustainability.
With Kartemquin, she also directed Typeface, an award-winning documentary on American typography and graphic design and the doc short Sacred Transformations. Formerly she worked as the organization's Director of Communications & Distribution and as the Associate Producer on Kartemquin’s Peabody-Award winning documentary Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Incognita, which was broadcast nationally on PBS’ Independent Lens in early 2008.
At Kartemquin films she also executive produced several projects including The Interrupters, directed by Steve James, which won the 2012 Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary, The Trials of Muhammad Ali, Raising Bertie, and Hard Earned. Prior to these projects, she began at Kartemquin as an intern and helped to develop the series The Learning Chronicles while earning her Master's Degree in the Humanities with an emphasis on Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Chicago. Other Chicago experience includes teaching at the Hyde Park Art Center, as well as working as a Theatre Manager at the Cadillac Palace and Thorne Auditorium for the Chicago International Film Festival and as a summer Fellow for The HistoryMakers, an African-American video oral-history archive.
Before moving to Chicago, she produced promotional spots for Public Television, directed the post-production department for a small media firm and worked for various other companies ranging from M&C Saatchi in Sydney, Australia to Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know? on National Public Radio. Justine received her Bachelor's Degree in Film and Journalism from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and has been a distinguished young alum: featured in 2012 in their "Forward under 40" list and in 2010, as recipient of the Ralph O. Nafziger award for "distinguished achievement by an alumnus within 10 years of graduation." She was selected to join the 2012 Leadership Greater Chicago class of fellows and in 2013 was named a "40 under 40" leader by the national New Leaders Council. Additionally, Justine was one of three Chicago-area nonprofit executive directors to be awarded the 2013 Harvard Business School Club of Chicago Fellowship.
Justine is now Executive Director of American Documentary, Inc and Executive Producer of POV, and is based in New York.
Films by Justine Nagan
- America to Me 2018
- Executive Producers
- Minding the Gap 2018
- Executive Producer
- Cooked: Survival by Zip Code 2018
- Executive Producers
- Keep Talking 2017
- Executive Producers
- All The Queen's Horses 2017
- Executive Producers
- '63 Boycott 2017
- Executive Producers
- Raising Bertie 2016
- Executive Producer
- Abacus: Small Enough to Jail 2016
- Executive Producers
- Unbroken Glass 2016
- Executive Producer
- In the Game 2015
- Executive Producers
- Hard Earned 2015
- Executive Producers
- The Homestretch 2014
- Executive Producers, GoodPitch Chicago
- On Beauty 2014
- Executive Producer
- Life Itself 2014
- Executive Producers
- Saving Mes Aynak 2014
- Executive Producer
- Almost There 2014
- Executive Producers
- American Arab 2013
- Executive Producers, Kartemquin Films Executive Director
- The Trials of Muhammad Ali 2013
- Executive Producers
- As Goes Janesville 2012
- Executive Producers
- The Interrupters 2011
- Executive Producers
- A Good Man 2011
- Kartemquin Films Executive Director
- Sacred Transformations 2010
- Director
- Typeface 2009
- Director/Producer
- In the Family 2008
- PRODUCTION ASSOCIATE
- At the Death House Door 2008
- Kartemquin Staff
- Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Incognita 2007
- Associate Producer, Additional camera, Kartemquin Staff