FEEL IT.STREAM
Julie Cohen

Julie Cohen

Directing

Biography

Julie Cohen is the Academy Award® nominated, Emmy winning director and producer of RBG (2018) along with Betsy West. Also with West, she directed Julia (2021) and My Name is Pauli Murray (2021). Previous films include The Sturgeon Queens, American Veteran and I Live to Sing. Before making documentaries, Julie was a producer for NBC News.

Known For

The Sturgeon Queens
6.0

Four generations of a Jewish immigrant family create Russ and Daughters, a Lower East Side lox and herring emporium that survives and thrives. Produced to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the store, this documentary features an extensive interview with two of the original daughters for whom the store was named, now 100 and 92 years old, and interviews with prominent enthusiasts of the store including Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, chef Mario Batali, New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin, and 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer. Rather than a conventional narrator, the filmmakers bring together six colorful longtime fans of the store, in their 80s and 90s, who sit around a table of fish reading the script in the style of a passover Seder. - Written by Julie Cohen

The Sturgeon Queens

2014Movie
No image

Two decades after Mandela's election, opera students struggle to fulfill the promises of a new South Africa. Some of the world's brightest new opera stars are emerging from the black townships of South Africa. When the University of Cape Town's once all white opera school opened its doors to black students after apartheid, a wave of remarkable talent came in. Recent graduates are singing at The Met and La Scala. This documentary musical follows three students from their home townships to Cape Town where they perform at the country's premier opera house, to New York where they sing at the prestigious Glimmerglass Festival. Along the way they confront everything from tuberculosis and racial politics to their parents' fears that music is not a suitable career.

Ndiphilela Ukucula: I Live to Sing

2013Movie