Jeffrey Leib Nettler Zimbalist (15 August 1978; Northampton) is an American documentary filmmaker. He has been Academy Award shortlisted, has won a Peabody, a DuPont, 5 Emmy Awards with 17 Emmy nominations. He is the owner of film and television production company All Rise Films.
A two-year investigation uncovers a scandal behind the making of one of the mostrecognized photographs of the 20th century. Five decades of secrets are unraveled in the search for justice for a man known only as “the stringer.”
Release Date:2025-01-25
Department:Production
Job:Executive Producer
Two real-life daredevils test the limits of their love and trust by illegally scaling one of the world's tallest buildings to perform an acrobatic stunt.
Release Date:2024-07-12
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:64
From Brooklyn beginnings to literary pantheon, Norman Mailer's unorthodox trajectory spans marriages, offspring, and accolades. An unprecedented glimpse into the preeminent 20th-century author's private and public worlds through intimate biography.
Release Date:2023-11-21
Department:Directing
Job:Director
A spine-tingling account of what happened when a Halloween night of celebration turned into a nightmare. More than 100,000 young revelers, who were packed into the narrow bar-lined alleyways of Seoul's trendy Itaewon neighborhood, became trapped in a mass panic. The toll was astonishing: 159 people, including two American students studying abroad, had suffocated and died that night. Nearly all those who perished were in their twenties.
Release Date:2023-10-17
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Episode Count:1
Vote Count:2
Training barefoot and in traditional dress, the Diablillas prepare for their biggest challenge yet: a softball game against their rivals, the Amazonas, in front of thousands of fans. In Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, groups of Indigenous women defy societal norms to establish female softball teams.
Release Date:2023-10-01
Department:Production
Job:Executive Producer
Fashion revolutionary Bethann Hardison looks back on her journey as a pioneering Black model, modeling agent, and activist, shining a light on an untold chapter in the fight for racial diversity.
Release Date:2023-09-15
Department:Production
Job:Executive Producer
Vote Count:1
The past, present, and future of European football collide when plans for a breakaway league emerge, leaving the game’s most powerful leaders to defend—or upend—the traditions of the sport.
Release Date:2023-01-12
Department:Production
Job:Executive Producer
Episode Count:4
Vote Count:9
With This Breath I Fly presents an intimate portrait of two courageous Afghan women fighting for their freedom after being imprisoned for “moral crimes,” while exposing the complicity of the European Union in censoring their voices, and how the international press – and our documentary – forever alters their lives.
Release Date:2022-10-01
Department:Production
Job:Executive Producer
Vote Count:1
A four-part documentary that takes viewers inside the heart-stopping stories of terror and survival experienced by those who were at the 2017 Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas.
Release Date:2022-09-27
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Episode Count:4
Vote Count:9
In covert modern warfare, the line between right and wrong has blurred. This docuseries examines the moral ambiguities of war as embodied by the 2018 case in which a U.S. Navy SEAL platoon accused its chief, Eddie Gallagher, of war crimes.
Release Date:2021-11-18
Department:Production
Job:Executive Producer
Episode Count:4
Vote Count:6
Millions in stolen cash. Missing luxury bourbon. Watch ordinary people almost get away with these extraordinary heists in this true crime series.
Release Date:2021-07-14
Department:Production
Job:Executive Producer
Episode Count:6
Vote Count:48
5-part docuseries chronicling the journeys of the next great fútbol players in their quest to represent their respective countries in the 2019 5v5 Championship in Madrid.
Release Date:2020-10-01
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Episode Count:5
After discovering the family of Solomon Linda, the writer of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," a reporter tries to help them fight for fair compensation.
Release Date:2019-05-17
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:22
Robert Johnson was one of the most influential blues guitarists ever. Even before his early death, fans wondered if he'd made a pact with the Devil.
Release Date:2019-04-26
Department:Production
Job:Executive Producer
Vote Count:80
Ambushed by Ulster loyalists, three members of the Miami Showband were killed in Northern Ireland in 1975. Was the crime linked to the government?
Release Date:2019-03-22
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:28
This investigation examines the mysterious shooting of soul icon Sam Cooke, whose death silenced one of the most vital voices in the civil rights movement.
Release Date:2019-02-08
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:47
Ordinary Gods is a feature-length documentary exploring the lives and sacrifices of the world's most promising professional soccer players.
Release Date:2019-02-01
Department:Production
Job:Executive Producer
For years, the murder of Chilean protest singer Victor Jara was blamed on an official in Pinochet's army. Now in exile, he tries to exonerate himself.
Release Date:2019-01-11
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:24
Documentary set in East St. Louis, Illinois, the city with the highest homicide rate in the United States, where the community copes with the terror of pervasive gun violence.
Release Date:2018-11-08
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:1
This documentary chronicles Johnny Cash's 1970 visit to the White House, where Cash's emerging liberal ideals clashed with Richard Nixon's policies.
Release Date:2018-11-02
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:42
Run-D.M.C. DJ Jam Master Jay made a huge impact in music and his community. But friends and family still seek closure years after his unsolved murder.
Release Date:2018-10-12
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:23
In 1976, reggae icon Bob Marley survived an assassination attempt as rival political groups battled in Jamaica. But who exactly was responsible?
Release Date:2018-10-12
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:56
Documentary series chronicling the journey of world’s next great soccer players on their quests to represent their respective countries in the 2018 World Cup™.
Release Date:2018-05-25
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Episode Count:11
In the 1990s, a motley band of teen surfers from the north shore of Oahu brought professional surfing to new heights. But as their stars rose, the competition threatened to tear their group apart.
Release Date:2018-04-21
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:17
Nossa Chape tracks the rebuilding of the Chapecoense football club in Brazil after an airplane carrying the team crashed on November 28th, 2016, and left all but three of the players dead.
Release Date:2018-03-28
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:10
The film chronicles the rise and fall of the world's most feared drug lord Pablo Escobar and his volatile love affair with Colombia's most famous journalist Virginia Vallejo throughout a reign of terror that tore a country apart.
Release Date:2017-10-12
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:997
An abused foster child is adopted by his boxing coach, who pushes him to achieve new heights, both in the ring and in life.
Release Date:2016-12-26
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Release Date:2016-10-01
Department:Directing
Job:Director
The life story of Brazilian football legend, Pele.
Release Date:2016-05-06
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:1082
Release Date:2015-10-01
Department:Directing
Job:Director
ESPN Films, creators of the critically-acclaimed 30 for 30 film series, will premiere a new series in April surrounding the 2014 FIFA World Cup on ESPN. 30 for 30: Soccer Stories will include a mix of standalone feature-length and 30-minute-long documentary films from an award winning group of filmmakers telling compelling narratives from around the international soccer landscape.
Release Date:2014-04-15
Department:Production
Job:Executive Producer
Episode Count:1
Vote Count:6
"Youngstown Boys" explores class and power dynamics in college sports through the parallel, interconnected journeys of one-time dynamic running back Maurice Clarett and former elite head coach Jim Tressel. Clarett and Tressel emerged from opposite sides of the tracks in Youngstown, Ohio, and then joined for a magical season at Ohio State University in 2002 that produced the first national football championship for the school in over 30 years. Shortly thereafter, though, Clarett was suspended from college football and began a downward spiral that ended with a prison term. Tressel continued at Ohio State for another eight years before his career there also ended in scandal.
Release Date:2013-12-14
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:6
A short documentary showing how Arnold Schwarzenegger's military service played a critical role in his fame.
Release Date:2012-09-26
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:1
Unprecedented documentary series featuring sports films from today's finest directors.
Release Date:2012-05-15
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Episode Count:1
Vote Count:3
Filmmaker Jeff Zimbalist (FAVELA RISING, THE TWO ESCOBARS) revisits personal video diaries and intimate footage he shot while in college of his mother and grandmother... A holocaust survivor loses her grasp on reality after years of fear, hiding, and time in a concentration camp. Her daughter, left to raise herself with no money and a paranoid schizophrenic mother, is destined to become an artist to make sense of her past. The grandson is subsequently raised in a comfortable middle-class upbringing, envying his mother and grandmother's struggle, and eventually directs this short film to make sense of it all. Weaving archival footage, rare interviews, 16mm home films and paintings, THE KANN ARTISTS tells the story of three generations in the Kann family, an evolution and comparison of suffering and survival, privilege and expression.
Release Date:2011-10-01
Department:Directing
Job:Director
This spectacular montage of scenes from a wealth of classic Bollywood films
Release Date:2011-05-14
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:5
Pablo Escobar was the richest, most powerful drug kingpin in the world, ruling the Medellin Cartel with an iron fist. Andres Escobar was the biggest soccer star in Colombia. The two were not related, but their fates were inextricably-and fatally-intertwined. Pablo's drug money had turned Andres' national team into South American champions, favored to win the 1994 World Cup in Los Angeles. It was there, in a game against the U.S., that Andres committed one of the most shocking mistakes in soccer history, scoring an "own goal" that eliminated his team from the competition and ultimately cost him his life. The Two Escobars is a riveting examination of the intersection of sports, crime, and politics.
Release Date:2010-06-22
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:44
This gripping documentary follows the trial of Issa Sesay, a leader in Sierra Leone's civil war who stands accused of crimes against humanity. Can the trial of one man uncover the truth of a traumatic past?
Release Date:2010-05-18
Department:Production
Job:Consulting Producer
Photographer Greg Friedler brings together 173 naked persons to photograph for his final book in his critically acclaimed "Naked" series in Las Vegas.
Release Date:2010-03-05
Department:Production
Job:Associate Producer
Vote Count:1
30 for 30 is the title for a series of documentary films airing on ESPN, its sister networks, and online highlighting interesting people and events in sports history. This currently includes four "volumes" of 30 episodes each, a 13-episode series under the ESPN Films Presents title in 2011–2012, and a series of 30 for 30 Shorts shown through the ESPN.com website. The series has also expanded to include Soccer Stories, which aired in advance of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and audio podcasts. This entry refers to the main Volumes of the series presented by ESPN
Release Date:2009-10-06
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Episode Count:2
Vote Count:35
Iron Ring was a reality television series and mixed martial arts competition, originating from the United States, that aired on BET.
Release Date:2008-03-18
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Episode Count:13
Hijos de la Guerra ("Children of the War") is a feature-length documentary film about the world's largest and most violent street gang: the Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has declared the MS-13 the fastest growing and most violent street gang in the United States. Through a series of over 80 interviews (including gang members across several countries, the gang's founders, experts and academics) and powerful footage inside jails in El Salvador, gang-infested neighborhoods of Los Angeles, and Salvadoran communities across the East Coast of the United States, the film sheds light on the root personal reasons for gang membership, the ensuing explosion of fratricidal violence as well as the complex role of social and government policy in both containing and aggravating gang proliferation.
Release Date:2007-12-18
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:1
Release Date:2007-10-01
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Episode Count:10
The story of the often contradictory and always audacious public figure, Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci, the former Mayor of Providence, RI. The film tracks Cianci's entanglements with city council opposition, union skirmishes, personal scandals, and criminal indictments. The result is a fascinating study of American local politics and a surprising tale of a man who, in the words of one commentator, "has a city as his mistress."
Release Date:2005-08-11
Department:Editing
Job:Editor
A man emerges from the slums of Rio to lead the nonviolent cultural movement known as Afro-reggae.
Release Date:2005-04-24
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:8
Release Date:2002-10-01
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Department:Production
Job:Executive Producer
Upon hearing that farmers in Indiana had taught their llamas to participate in an informal square dance, filmmaker Cevin Soling decided to raise the bar and see if llamas could be trained to perform in a major theatrical production of Swan Lake. The performance fuses high and low brow forms of art including a new rendering of the Tchaikovsky score. The vision takes Soling on a journey to the world of ballet, llamas, and jug bands.
Department:Editing
Job:Editor