Julia Bacha is a Peabody award-winning filmmaker, media strategist, and the Creative Director at the non-profit Just Vision. Since graduating Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 2003, she has strategically used documentary film to change commonly held narratives about the Middle East.

Julia started her filmmaking career in Cairo, where she wrote and edited Control Room (2004), for which she was nominated for the Writer’s Guild of America Award. Control Room became one of the highest grossing political documentaries of all time and introduced Americans for the first time to the inner workings of the Arab satellite channel, Al Jazeera.

Subsequently, she moved to Jerusalem where she co-directed, wrote and edited Encounter Point (2006), which followed Palestinians and Israelis who risked their lives and public standing to promote an end to the occupation and the conflict. Encounter Point premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, broadcast on Al Arabiya to millions of viewers and was endorsed by the Israeli Education Ministry for use in public schools.

Julia then directed and produced the critically-acclaimed Budrus (2009), which chronicled the story of a Palestinian community organizer who united all Palestinian factions and Israelis to save his village from destruction by Israel's separation barrier. Hailed in the New York Times as "this year's must-see documentary," the film successfully shifted the way international media covered the protests, as confirmed by an independent media-audit by Edelman PR.

Most recently, Julia directed and produced My Neighbourhood (2012), which follows a Palestinian teenager struggling to reclaim his home in East Jerusalem from Israeli settlers. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, was released online by The Guardian and won the coveted Peabody Award in 2013.

Julia's work has been exhibited at the Sundance, Berlin and Tribeca Film Festivals, broadcast on the BBC, HBO and Al Jazeera and screened at widely diverse settings, from Palestinian refugee camps and villages to the halls of the American Congress and European Parliament. She has been a guest on numerous television shows such as Charlie Rose and UP with Steve Riskin on MSNBC, and her work has been profiled in almost every major news outlet around the world such as The Washington Post , Der Spiegel, O Globo, Israeli's Channel 2, The Economist, Haaretz and Ma'an. In addition to over twenty film festival awards, Julia is the recipient of the 2009 King Hussein Leadership Prize, 2010 Search for Common Ground Award, 2011 Ridenhour Film Prize, 2012 O Globo "Faz Diferença" Prize and the 2012 PUMA Creative Impact Award.

Julia is a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Media Advisor for the Sundance/Skoll Stories of Change Initiative and a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum. Her TED talk, “Pay Attention to Nonviolence,” was selected as one of the best talks of 2011 by the TED curators and has been viewed by over half a million people worldwide. She lives in New York with her husband and daughter.

Entertainers, Media Professionals, Producers and Directors, Israel, Jerusalem, Israel, Tel Aviv, Israel, Judaism, For Jewish Groups, Jewish, Jewish Culture & Heritage, Filmmakers, Documentarian, Authors, Engineers, Environment & Sustainability, Economics, Neuroscience, Space, Robotics (Engineers), Genetics, Flight, Neuroeconomics, Actors, Activists, Music, Science & Technology, TED, Law, Musician, Biologists, Foreign Policy, Celebrity & Entertainment, Internet & Technology Industries