Filmmakers
Mimi Wilcox
Director | Editor | Producer
Mimi Wilcox is an Emmy-nominated and ACE Eddie Award-winning documentary filmmaker and editor based in Brooklyn. She honed her skills working with renowned production company Kartemquin Films, which instilled in her a deep understanding of documentary ethics and storytelling that she brings to every project she cuts.
Mimi directed, produced and edited the mid-length documentary BAD HOSTAGE (Sheffield DocFest 2024), which has been shortlisted for a 2026 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. As an editor, her series credits include the 3-part Netflix docuseries ESCAPING TWIN FLAMES (2023), for which she won an American Cinema Editors Eddie award and was nominated for a Primetime Emmy; THE FOX HOLLOW MURDERS (Hulu/ABC Studios 2025); and LET US PREY (ID/MAX 2023). Feature documentary editing credits include Kartemquin Films' feature documentary THE DILEMMA OF DESIRE (Showtime, SXSW 2020). In short-form, she edited the award-winning documentary MnM (POV, CPH:DOX 2023) for Multitude Films’ Queer Futures series, as well as the male birth control documentary IT’S DIFFERENT FOR GIRLS (HotDocs 2025).
Mimi was a 2022-2023 Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellow. She is a member of the Alliance of Documentary Editors and serves on the Membership Committee. She was born and raised in Northern California and before moving to Brooklyn spent a decade living in Chicago.
Max Asaf
Producer
Max Asaf is a Chicago-based, award-winning freelance documentary filmmaker. From 2016-2019, Max served as the development coordinator at Kartemquin Films, helping raise over $5 million for the organization and its documentaries including Minding the Gap, America to Me, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, Finding Yingying, The Dilemma of Desire, Represent and Edith+Eddie. Max is a proud member of the Documentary Producers Alliance.
Since leaving Kartemquin, Max has served as a producer, fundraiser, and archival researcher on projects from award-winning documentary filmmakers including as the Co-Producer of The Last Strike, an upcoming feature documentary on the 1981 PATCO strike from Kindling Group, and The Last Drop, a short sci-fi fiction film exploring the overlooked signs of relationship abuse.
Max is also in early post-production on his feature directorial debut, Within the Box, a personal documentary about the memories, stories, and familial identity contained and lost in a box of photos smuggled out of Poland eight decades ago. An early cut of Within the Box screened as a part of the Kartemquin Fall Festival and the Cannes Short Film Corner.
Kirsten Johnson
Executive Producer
Kirsten Johnson is a documentary filmmaker and one of the only 5% of women members of the American Society of Cinematographers. Her camerawork appears in, among others, Academy Award-winner CITIZENFOUR, Academy nominated THE INVISIBLE WAR, and Cannes winner FAHRENHEIT 9/11. Her film DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD premiered at Sundance 2020, where it won the Jury Prize for Innovation in Nonfiction Storytelling. The film won the Primetime Emmy for Directing, made the Oscar shortlist, is distributed by The Criterion Collection, and is currently showing on Netflix.
Her previous film, CAMERAPERSON, named on the New York Times “Top Ten Films of 2016” was also shortlisted for the Academy Award. Her Field of Vision short, THE ABOVE, was nominated for the IDA’s “Best Short Award” for 2016. Her next project is a scripted feature film based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Susan Sontag.
Diane Quon
Consulting Producer
Diane Quon is an Academy Award®-nominated producer who worked as a marketing executive at NBC and at Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles before moving back to her hometown of Chicago with her family.
Diane has produced multiple documentaries often with emerging and BIPOC directors at the helm. Her first four films were Kartemquin Films co-productions including: the Oscar and Emmy-nominated, Peabody and Sundance award-winning film, Minding the Gap directed by Bing Liu (Sundance 2018, POV, Hulu); Emmy-nominated Finding Yingying directed by Jiayan “Jenny” Shi (SXSW 2020, MTVDocs); The Dilemma of Desire with director Maria Finitzo (SXSW 2020, Showtime); and For the Left Hand (Woodstock 2021, PBS) directed by Kartemquin founder, Gordon Quinn, and Leslie Simmer.
In addition, Diane produced the Oscar short-listed Bad Axe directed by David Siev (SXSW 2022, IFC Films); Emmy-nominated Wuhan Wuhan directed by Yung Chang (Hot Docs 2021, POV); Surf Nation (Mountainfilm Telluride 2022, World Channel); Breaking the News (Tribeca 2023, Indie Lens) and aka Mr. Chow (Telluride 2023, HBO/Max). At the same time, Diane was able to executive produce the documentaries of many filmmakers directing their first features.
Diane is currently developing a fiction feature based on the New York Times best-selling book, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, along with producing and executive producing many new projects.
Diane is an Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences member, a Television Academy member, and a DPA and PGA member. She is a recipient of the 2020 Cinereach Producer Award, and is a Sundance Creative Producing Fellow, an IFP Cannes Producer Fellow and a Film Independent Fellow. She is a very proud mother of four.
Clare Manchon
Associate Producer
Clare Manchon has composed the original motion picture scores for films such as Secret Mall Apartment, Turn Every Page, scripted French hit En Attendant Bojangles, oscars shortlisted films HYSTERICAL GIRL, DECIDING VOTE and beloved BAD HOSTAGE. She's also written songs for Paul Feig's new film, HOUSEMAID and Nicholas Cage's THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT, as well as additional score for the acclaimed series MODERN LOVE. Clare has collaborated with Olivier Manchon on all these musical endeavors. She has also been a lifelong student of film and all the inner workings of storytelling and production. She is beyond thrilled to come on board as associate producer of Bad Hostage, a film that envelopes you and will change your mind.
Nyneve Minnear
Consulting Editor
Nyneve Laura Minnear is a Documentary Film Editor, Writer and Story Consultant based in Brooklyn. Her current film Little Richard: I Am Everything for CNN Films/HBO Max, with director Lisa Cortes, premiered in Competition at Sundance 2023. She has been a fellow at the Sundance Documentary Edit Lab and two IFP Edit Labs, an advisor for the Gotham Doc Story Lab, a Steering Committee member for the newly formed Alliance of Documentary Editors (ADE), and mentor with the Karen Schmeer Film Editing Diversity Program.
Recent work includes: The Art of Making It, a tapestry film that lifts the veil off of the Art World ecosystem, won an Audience Award at SXSW 2022; HBO’s The Vow, served as series as Editor and Story Consultant; 306 Hollywood, the first documentary to premiere in the NEXT section for Innovative Filmmaking at SUNDANCE 2018, winner of an Emmy, and broadcast on PBS-POV; (T)error, winner of a Sundance 2015 Special Jury Award, an EMMY for Outstanding Investigative Documentary and a Grand Jury Award at Full Frame Film Festival. Nyneve began her career in documentaries working on productions for PBS-FRONTLINE and NOVA.
Olivier and Clare Manchon
Original Score
Based in Kingston NY (from Brooklyn/Paris/Martha's Vineyard), Olivier and Clare Manchon come from a background of writing, recording and touring - sharing music with live audiences. They had the band Clare & the Reasons and Olivier headed up Orchestre de Chambre Miniature. They started scoring with a documentary about Ricky Jay about 12 years ago and haven't looked back. Offering scores and songs to films and TV such as Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb, Black Box starring Vanessa Redgrave, PBS' The Life of Joseph Pulitzer, multiple songs in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent starring Nicolas Cage and Pedro Pascal, Netflix's Emily in Paris, PBS' Leopold and Loeb, NBC's Good Girls, Once We Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band, and Oscar shortlisted Hysterical Girl.
Over the years collaborations have been had with Van Dyke Parks, Sufjan Stevens, The National, Peter Dinklage, "Spring Awakening" (the Musical), "Arrested Development" (TV) and so many more. Olivier and Clare approach each film project by creating a new musical palette and world to support and enhance the story. Fixated on sound quality and orchestrations, each project proves that Olivier and Clare are willing to go the organic road of richness and warmth, never cutting corners, always with a collaborative spirit.
In Association With
The Film Fund
Contributing Producer
Tom Verdi
Director of Photography
Victor Tadashi Suarez
Motion Designer
Alosha Robinson
Sound Design and Re-Recording Engineer
Mark Bandy
Colorist
Luz Marina Zamora
Special Thanks
Dr. Allan Wade
Dan Carlson Filbey
Tim Horsburgh
Gordon Quinn
Diane Quon
Debra Zimmerman
Terrence Mickey
Ann Baker Riker Charitable Fund
