Rachel Leah Jones
Rachel Leah Jones (born 1970) is an American-Israeli documentary film director and producer. Her documentary film Advocate about the controversial human rights lawyer Leah Tsemel, which she co-directed and co-produced with cinematographer Philippe Bellaïche, premiered at 2019 Sundance Film Festival, and won top prizes at Kraków Film Festival, Thessaloniki Documentary Festival and Docaviv Festival. Early life and education Jones was born in Berkeley, California and raised in Tel Aviv. She has a BA in Race, Class, & Gender Studies and the Politics of Representation from Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington, and an MFA in Media Arts Production from the City University of New York. Over the years, Jones has worked extensively on socially and politically engaged documentaries about Israel/Palestine and has been affiliated with progressive media outlets such as the (anti-)Occupation Club in Tel Aviv, the joint Israeli/Palestinian Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem and the critically acclaimed public TV/radio program Democracy Now! in New York. Career From 1992 until 1998, Jones worked in several positions in the non-profit sector, including as a fundraiser, writer and photo editor at the Alternative Information Center, an NGO that disseminates information on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with progressive analysis; as a fundraiser for HILA, a