Creator

Nicole Newnham

Nicole Newnham is an American documentary director and producer who co-directed Sentenced Home.

Nicole Newnham is an American documentary producer, director and writer who co-directed Sentenced Home (2006), about Cambodian American deportees.[1][2] She has made documentaries for about 30 years and has worked from Oakland and San Francisco, California.[3][1][2]

Early work

Newnham earned a master's degree from the Stanford Documentary Film Program in 1994.[1][4] Her first documentary, Unforgettable Face, screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 1994. It is about a Japanese American soldier who was present at the liberation of Dachau, and one of the survivors he helped to free.[1][2] She was associate producer of Eye of the Storm (1997), a profile of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan distributed by the BBC. She also made stories on the changing American workplace for the PBS series Livelyhood and more than 25 field pieces on California farmers, artists and food sellers for Martha Stewart Living.[2]

She co-produced They Drew Fire, a PBS documentary about the combat artists of World War II, made with the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Brian Lanker. She co-wrote its companion book, distributed by HarperCollins.[5][2] For the National Geographic and PBS special Skin, which was nominated for an Emmy, she field-produced a story about the Cambodian community in Boston. There she first learned of the plight of Cambodian deportees.[2][6]

Sentenced Home

Newnham directed and co-produced Sentenced Home with David Grabias. It was broadcast on the PBS series Independent Lens.[7][4][8] The film follows three Cambodian Americans raised in Seattle who face deportation after serving prison sentences for crimes committed as teenagers. It shows how U.S. immigration law after the September 11 attacks affected Cambodian refugees and their families, and how a change in policy sent refugees back to a country many barely knew.[2][8] Its subjects are Loeun Lun, Many Uch and Kim Ho Ma. Their lives were shaped by displacement from Cambodia, gangs and prison in the United States.[8] Many Uch coaches a Little League team as a way to give back to Seattle's Cambodian American community.[2] On March 19, 2006, Newnham appeared at a screening of the film at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.[7]

Sentenced Home was nominated for an Emmy; Wikipedia gives the year as 2006, and ITVS lists a 2007 News and Documentary Emmy nomination for Outstanding Informational Programming.[1][9]

Later films

Newnham instigated, co-produced and directed The Rape of Europa, about the fate of Europe's art during World War II. It played in theaters in 80 U.S. cities and aired as a PBS primetime special. It was nominated for two Emmy Awards and a Writers Guild of America award, and was shortlisted for the documentary Oscar.[4][6]

She co-directed and produced The Revolutionary Optimists (2013), which follows young activists in the slums of Kolkata. It was selected for Independent Lens, won the Sundance Hilton Sustainability Award and was nominated for an Emmy. The film led her to develop Map Your World, a platform where young people use mobile phones to map public-health data for community campaigns.[4][1]

With the Australian artist and director Lynette Wallworth, she produced two virtual-reality films. Collisions won the 2017 Emmy for Outstanding New Approaches to Documentary, and Awavena won the same award in 2020. Both premiered at Sundance and at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and Awavena was selected for the 2018 Venice Biennale.[5][1]

With Jim LeBrecht she co-directed and produced Crip Camp, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award.[5][1] The Disappearance of Shere Hite, made with NBC News Studios, premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. It draws on Hite's archives at the Radcliffe Institute, with Dakota Johnson voicing Hite's private writings, and IFC Films gave it a theatrical release.[3][1] It made the 2023 DOC NYC Awards Short List and won a Special Mention for Editing, and in 2025 it was nominated for the Cinema for Peace Dove for Women's Empowerment.[1]

Newnham has been nominated for five Emmy Awards and is a four-time Sundance Film Festival alumna.[5] Her films have also been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco International Film Festival, Lincoln Center and the Walker Art Museum.[4]

Works


See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 Nicole Newnham, Wikipedia
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 PBS Independent Lens, Sentenced Home
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 International Documentary Association, Faith in the Creative Impulse: Nicole Newnham Discusses The Disappearance of Shere Hite (November 20, 2023)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Skoll Foundation, Nicole Newnham
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Center for Independent Documentary, Nicole Newnham
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 ITVS, The Revolutionary Optimists
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Sentenced Home
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 CAAM, Sentenced Home
  9. ↑ ITVS, Sentenced Home
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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:35.