Nonfiction Unlimited, the commercial production company that works with accomplished documentary filmmakers, has signed Abby Fuller, who directs for the award-winning Netflix documentary series Chef’s Table created by David Gelb, another Nonfiction roster director. Fuller is the youngest filmmaker and the only woman on the Netflix Original series. The documentary director got her start producing the Emmy Award-winning series True Life for MTV and since then has directed, produced and edited documentaries for: Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment, Sundance Channel, MTV, Food Network, Travel Channel, Netflix and National Geographic.
“I’m happy that David introduced her to us,” said Loretta Jeneski, executive producer at Nonfiction Unlimited. “She’s insightful and smart and knows how to weave a beautiful story; for example, her Chef’s Table episode about Ana Ros, the Slovenian chef who’s spent 16 years revolutionizing her country’s food. Abby sets the table for Ana in such a way that you not only smell and taste what the great chef is cooking, but you feel and embrace her down-to-earth personality. Abby brings a fresh face and perspective to Nonfiction and we love that.”
Fuller’s feature documentary Do You Dream In Color? examines the injustices in the education system suffered by blind students. It has won awards at festivals across the nation and was screened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. Fuller is currently directing a documentary featuring heroic woman athletes from around the globe. In June 2017 these women will climb Mount Kilimanjaro to set the world record for the highest altitude soccer match ever played in an effort to inspire unprecedented awareness in the fight for gender equality.
With Fuller’s addition, half of the directors at Nonfiction Unlimited are now women. The roster includes Barbara Kopple, Rory Kennedy, Tracy Droz Tragos, Chai Vasarhelyi and Jessica Yu. The 22-year old company is also woman-founded and owned.
“It’s not that I set out to hire women specifically,” said Jeneski. “I was just looking for great directors, and what do you know? Half of them turned out to be women. Interesting what can happen when you aren’t wearing blinders. Great talent is great talent.”
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More