Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny is a co-production of Jeff Bieber Productions LLC, LOOKS Film & TV Produktionen GmbH, SWR (Suedwestdeutscher Rundfunk) and RBB (RUNDFUNK BERLIN-BRANDENBURG) in association with the Center for Independent Documentary and American Masters Pictures.
The film is directed by Chana Gazit and Jeff Bieber, written by Jeff Bieber and Maia Harris, edited by Sabine Krayenbühl and produced by Salme López Sabina, Niklas Hoffmann-Walbeck and Chana Gazit. Original music composed by Florian Tessloff. Cinematography by Jason Longo, Christopher Sharman, and Christoph Rohrscheidt. Graphics and animation by Mindbomb Films. Archive Producers are Pearl Lieberman and Frederike Ruland. Line Producer is Nathalie Dietrich. Assistant Editor and Associate Producer is Robert Gordon. Executive Producers are Jeff Bieber, Birgit Rasch, Regina Bouchehri , Gunnar Dedio and Michael Kantor. Antje Stamer is Executive Producer for SWR and Simone Reuter is Executive for RBB. Senior Advisors are Roger Berkowitz, Samantha Rose Hill, Jerome Kohn, and Lyndsey Stonebridge.
For American Masters, Michael Kantor is executive producer, Julie Sacks is series producer, and Joe Skinner is digital lead.
Production Credits
About the Team
Jeff Bieber
Executive Producer, Writer, Director
Jeff Bieber is a 40-year veteran of public media. His films and social impact campaigns include Avoiding Armageddon (8-hours, 2003), My Journey Home (2-hours, 2004), America At A Crossroads (12-hours, 2007), The Jewish Americans (6-hours, 2008), Latino Americans (6-hours, 2013), Italian Americans (4-hours, 2015), The Pilgrims (2-hours, 2015), and Asian Americans (5-hours, 2020). He has earned two national Emmy Awards, a duPont-Columbia Award and three Peabody Awards. Jeff Bieber Productions was created in 2022. Projects include Dante, a 4-hour series directed by Ric Burns (April 2024), The Harvest, a 2-hour film for American Experience (September 2023); Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined (September 2024);Weaving Nature (April 2024). Projects currently in production for American Masters include Hannah Arendt – Facing Tyranny (slated for June 27, 2025); Projects in development include Liz Diller: Making Space for the Future for American Masters, slated for 2026.
Chana Gazit
Director and Producer
Chana Gazit is an award-winning documentary producer, director and writer. Her work has been honored with multiple EMMY nominations and three EMMY Awards. Additionally, her work has been recognized by, among others, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Journalism Awards, the Peabody Awards, the Writer’s Guild Awards, and the Sundance Film Festival. Films include Franklin Roosevelt (4-hours) and Lyndon Johnson (4-hours). PBS series, American Experience: Chicago ‘68, Surviving the Dust Bowl, Meltdown at Three Mile Island, Fatal Flood, The Pill, Test Tube Babies, The Forgotten Plague, and The Codebreaker. Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers, Slavery & the Making of America, Destination America, This Emotional Life, Soundtracks, a look at the social movements of the last half-century through the lens of music. Ballerina Boys, and Big Pharma, (6-part series). American Masters.
Salme M. López Sabina
Producer
Salme M. López Sabina has led production for several groundbreaking, critically acclaimed films for Public Television including “Latin Music USA”, FRONTLINE and American Experience's co-production of “God in America” and most recently, the highly anticipated six-hour series “Latino Americans” which aired in the Fall of 2013. Honing her craft within news and documentaries over the last ten years Salme began her career in journalism where she worked for the most widely read newspaper in San Juan Puerto Rico “El Nuevo Día”. Salme was born in Havana, Cuba and emigrated to the United States in 1992.
Maia Harris
Writer
Maia Harris has written and produced historical documentaries for more than twenty years. Most recently, she co-wrote and produced Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre, directed by Marco Williams, nominated for a primetime Emmy for non- fiction writing. She wrote and co-produced GI Jews: Jewish Americans in World War II (PBS), No Job for a Woman (PBS World), Banished (Independent Lens), Storyville: The Naked Dance (PBS) and Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel. Harris began her career as a researcher on Eyes on the Prize II: America at a Racial Crossroads. She has won three Emmy awards for her work.
Sabine Krayenbühl
Editor
Sabine Krayenbühl is an award-winning filmmaker with over twenty theatrical documentaries and narrative features to her credit. She co-directed and edited the NEH-supported documentaries, Obsessed with Light and Letters from Baghdad. Her editing work includes Oscar and Independent Spirit Award nominated My Architect for which she received an American Cinema Editors (ACE) Eddie Award nomination and the Emmy-winning The Hunt for Planet B. Additional credits include Mad Hot Ballroom, The Bridge, Picasso and Braque go to the Movies, produced by Martin Scorsese, Virgin Tales, Jennifer Fox’s Emmy nominated My Reincarnation, Salinger on which she consulted, HBO’s The Price of Everything and most recently, Monk in Pieces about boundary breaking artist Meredith Monk, which she also co-produced. Krayenbühl has a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and is a member of NYWIFT and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Nina Hoss
Voice of Hannah Arendt
Nina Hoss studied at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin and has performed on many of Europe’s most prestigious stages, including the Deutsches Theater, the Berliner Ensemble, Schauspielhaus Zürich, and the Berliner Schaubühne. Most recently, she played Ranyevskaya in The Cherry Orchard at London’s Donmar Warehouse and St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York, and appeared in Notes from Underground at the Ruhrtriennale.
Hoss is internationally acclaimed for her distinctive work in film and television. She received the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 2007 Berlinale for Yella and went on to collaborate with director Christian Petzold on Jerichow, Barbara (Silver Bear, 2012), and Phoenix. Her film credits also include A Most Wanted Man, Return to Montauk, Pelikanblut, and The Audition (Das Vorspiel), for which she won Best Actress at both the San Sebastián and Stockholm film festivals. She starred alongside Cate Blanchett in Todd Field’s TÁR and appeared in My Little Sister (Schwesterlein), as well as in upcoming films Zikades and Hedda. On television, she is known for her roles in Homeland and Jack Ryan. Hoss has served on juries at the Locarno, Berlin, and Venice film festivals, and has received numerous honors including the Adolf Grimme Award, Bavarian Television Award, German Film Award, the Douglas Sirk Prize, and the Hannelore Elsner Award. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Jason Longo
Director of Photography
Jason Longo is an EMMY winning cinematographer, editor and director. Jason’s filmmaking career began in 1994 when he documented the resettling of collective farms by Chechen war refugees in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. In the years since, he has photographed over 150 documentary films and television programs in over 65 countries on 6 continents. He is a frequent contributor to the PBS series Frontline, NOVA, the American Experience and American Masters.
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Florian Tessloff
Composer
Florian Tessloff is based in Hamburg. His multi-genre compositions include soundtracks for renowned films such as Uli Edel’s terrorist drama The Baader Meinhof Complex (Academy Award nomination Best Foreign Language Film 2009), Max Zähle’s debut drama Raju (Academy Award nomination Best Live Action Short Film 2012, Winner Student Academy Awards 2011), Kerstin Ahlrich’s 80’s black comedy Night Ride and Daphne Charizani’s war drama Sisters Apart (World Premiere at Berlin International Film Festival 2020, section Perspectives on German Cinema, Grimme Price Fiction Winner 2023). Tessloff has also composed extensively for TV including Matti Geschonneck’s German Television Award-winning courtroom drama The End of a Night (Grimme Price FictionWinner 2013), period drama Ottilie von Faber-Castell by Claudia Garde (ZDF) as well as Züli Aladag’s acclaimed two-part terror drama Brüder (ARD). Most recently, he composed the scores for the mini series Unbroken (ZDFneo), and co-scored Oliver Rihs’s high end drama series Blackout for Joyn/Sat1. He recently scored1950’s post WWII spy thriller Bonn for German broadcaster WDR/ARD, directed by Claudia Garde.​
Pearl Lieberman
Archive Producer
Pearl Lieberman has been working in television and film for over 2 decades including 3 films and a TV program with Michael Moore (Sicko and TV Nation), and on films for Ron Howard (The Beatles Eight Days a Week & Eden) and PBS (The Harvest). At the forefront during the network’s infancy Pearl helped launch MTV and later produced the NBC network program Friday Night Videos where career highlights included working with Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, James Brown and Little Richard. She also worked on documentaries about the Apollo Theater and the music icon and activist Dionne Warwick. Pearl worked as an Archival Producer for 4 seasons of Inside Comedy with David Steinberg documenting the history of many comedy legends. Her mantra is- if it exists, I’ll find it and she loves an archival challenge.​
Robert Gordon
Assistant Editor and Associate Producer
Robert Gordon is an award-winning American film director, editor, and associate producer of independent documentaries for networks such as PBS. Gordon’s work has screened worldwide in Oscar-qualifying film festivals. Recent selections include the Nashville Film Festival and the Los Angeles Film Festival. He won best narrative film at the New Visions New Voices Film Festival, and Best Producer at the Tisch First Run Film Festival. Gordon’s work centers around alienation and delusion, but they’re funny too. As a commercial editor, Gordon has edited spots, commercials, and event footage for Genius Sports, McDonalds, and Netflix, as well as videos and spots for morning dance group Daybreaker. His work has been screened on the Today Show and the Oprah Winfrey Network. Gordon was raised in Southern California and attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He is the co-founder of 52Films, a collective of Filmmakers who make a film a week each year.​
