James Longley

James Bertrand Longley is an American filmmaker. His work includes the documentary, Gaza Strip, released in 2002. His production, Iraq in Fragments, presents a view of Iraq and Iraqis during the first two years of Iraq War. It was awarded three jury awards at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, but lost to An Inconvenient Truth. His short film Sari's Mother premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Short but lost to Freeheld. In 2009, Longley was awarded a $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship "Genius Grant." Between 2007 and 2009 Longley was working on a film in Iran. The film was cut short during the time of the elections and ensuing protests in June, 2009. On Sunday, June 14, The New York Times Lede blog reported he "was arrested with his translator while interviewing people on a street in Tehran, near the Interior Ministry," and later interviewed him about his and his translator's experiences. This film is currently on hold indefinitely. Following up on IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS, Longley produced and filmed the feature documentary ANGELS ARE MADE OF LIGHT in Afghanistan. The film, following life in a school over three years, makes Afghan reality accessible by giving the audience a human-scale entry point - the world of a neighborhood school in Kabul - through which the larger context of Afghan society and history may be more clearly understood. Completed in 2018, the film accurately predicts the 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Reviewing ANGELS ARE MADE OF LIGHT in the Los Angeles Times in 2019, film critic Kenneth Turan wrote: “What is life like on the ground for ordinary people in another culture, another world? That’s been the bread and butter of observational documentaries for forever, but almost never is it done with the kind of beauty and grace filmmaker James Longley brings to his Afghanistan-set ANGELS ARE MADE OF LIGHT. As his 2006 Oscar-nominated IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS demonstrated, MacArthur Fellow Longley, who serves as his own cinematographer as well as directs, has an almost magical ability to envelope us in other realities.