Through her company Ruthless Films, Ruth Leitman has directed six feature-length documentaries. Her Southern Gothic film Alma (1998) won the Documentary Feature Jury Prize at Hamptons Film Festival, and screened at IDFA, SWSW, DGA, and Whitney Biennial. Premiering at Tribeca Film Festival and Hot Docs, her film Lipstick & Dynamite (2005) won the Documentary Storytelling Prize at Nantucket Film Festival, was released theatrically, and was broadcast on SHOWTIME.

Artistic Director and founding member of Kartemquin Films, Gordon Quinn has been making documentaries for over 50 years. Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun Times, called his first film Home for Life (1966) "an extraordinarily moving documentary." With Home for Life Gordon established the direction he would take for the next four decades, making cinéma vérité films that investigate and critique society by documenting the unfolding lives of real people.