OUR TEAM
OREN JACOBY
Director / Producer / Writer
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Oren Jacoby is an Academy Award-nominated director, writer, and producer. His new film, This Is Not a Drill will premiere this summer. Sister Rose’s Passion (HBO), won Best Documentary Short Film at the Tribeca Film Festival and received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Short. On Broadway (PBS) tells the story of how the Broadway theater helped save New York City. Shadowman (Amazon) was Audience Award runner-up at the Tribeca Film Festival. Jacoby directed and co-wrote Constantine’s Sword with James Carroll. Other director/producer credits: Lady ‘Ndrangheta (Sky) on women in the Mafia; Elon Musk (Bloomberg TV) for the Risk Takers series; The Beatles Revolution (ABC, VH-1); Master Thief, on the ‘art heist of the century’ (ABC); Topdog Diaries (PBS) with Suzan-Lori Parks; Sam Shepard: Stalking Himself (PBS); Idols of the Game (TBS) with Michael Jordan; and The Second Russian Revolution (BBC) won the DuPont /Columbia Gold Baton for Best Documentary Series. Jacoby's films have been supported by the Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, and the American Film Institute.
BETSY WEST
Director / Producer
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Betsy West is an award winning filmmaker, journalist and professor. She and Julie Cohen directed the Academy Award®-nominated and Emmy winning RBG (Magnolia, Participant, CNN Films) as well as the shortlisted Julia (Sony Pictures Classics); My Name is Pauli Murray (Participant/Amazon Studios), which won both the Peabody and duPont Columbia awards; and Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down (Briarcliff/CNN), nominated for a Critics Choice Award. She and Cohen were executive producers of the recent Amazon documentary FRIDA. Most recently, Betsy was the director of Once Upon a Time in Ukraine, a short documentary nominated for a Critics Choice Award and shortlisted for an Oscar in 2024. She is Executive Producer of the upcoming Hulu documentary Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything. As an ABC News producer and executive producer of the documentary series Turning Point, she won 21 Emmy awards. Betsy is the Fred W. Friendly Professor Emerita at Columbia Journalism School.
JULIE COHEN
Director / Producer
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Julie Cohen is an Academy Award nominated, Emmy winning documentary director and producer, a former news producer and the winner of the 2024 Freedom of Expression Award from the Jewish Film Institute. Her films directed alongside Betsy West include the Oscar nominated, Emmy winning RBG (Magnolia/CNN Films), the Peabody winning My Name is Pauli Murray (Amazon Studios), the Oscar shortlisted JULIA (Sony Pictures Classics), and the Critics Choice nominated Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down (Briarcliff/CNN). Solo projects include the Emmy nominated Every Body (2023) and the 10 time Audience Choice award winning The Sturgeon Queens (Focus Features). In 2024 executive produced the Oscar shortlisted FRIDA alongside West and directed The Path Forward alongside Mo Husseini. Before she started making documentaries, Julie was a longtime producer at NBC News.
She holds a masters degree from Yale Law School.
SAM JINISHIAN
Producer
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Sam Jinishian is a producer for independent documentary films and public television. Recent projects include Storyville Films’ Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down (Briarcliff Entertainment/CNN Films), Julia (Sony Pictures Classics), and On Broadway. Other notable past projects include Mayor Pete (Amazon Studios), Shadowman (Audience Award runner-up for Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival), and Looks Like Laury Sounds Like Laury (named one of the best TV shows of 2015 by The New York Times). She is a producer on The Day Iceland Stood Still (2024 Hot Docs premiere), about the Iceland women’s movement, and Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse (2024 DOC NYC premiere), about legendary comic artist Art Spiegelman, which will air on PBS' American Masters in spring 2025. She is currently producing The Fight of Our Lives for Storyville.
BROOKE BASIN
FINANCIAL OFFICER​
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Brooke Bassin has overseen accounting for all Storyville productions since 2015. A playwright and filmmaker, she has directed productions of her work in New York and Los Angeles and was privileged to document the first year of A River Blue Vocational Training and Rehabilitation Center in Alebtong, Uganda. Her plays include Yank's Glory Dreams, Charlie Rips and the upcoming Alibi Room. She lives in New York City with her partner, Stuart, and their two bulldogs.
FREQUENT COLLABORATORS
Our frequent collaborators include editors Ilya Chaikin, Carla Guiterrez, and Abhay Sofsky;
cinematographers Tom Hurwitz, Claudia Raschke Robinson, Bob Richman, Buddy Squires, and Dyanna Taylor;
composers Miriam Cutler and Joel Goodman; and colorist Ken Sirulnick.