opinion
CHRISTMAS CHEER
Each year, the USPS runs “Operation Santa,” answering thousands of letters to Santa from kids. Filmmaker Dana Nachman tracked the program in the heartwarming new doc “Dear Santa.”
Dana Nachman is an award-winning filmmaker of both fiction and documentary films. Nachman’s latest feature documentary Dear Santa was recently purchased by IFC Films and will release nationwide in December. Nachman’s 2018 feature documentary Pick of the Litter was sold within 48 hours of its premiere at the Slamdance festival and soon after was released theatrically also by IFC Films. It currently streams on Netflix. The Walt Disney Company hired Nachman to remake Pick of the Litter as a limited original series for Disney+. Nachman served as one of the showrunners of the series. She also directed three of the episodes.
Nachman’s 2019 narrative short Hook Up 2.0 premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and is now traveling the country and screening at dozens of festivals. It is a part of a trilogy of shorts each featuring a female protagonist of a different generation.
In 2018 Nachman won best female director awards at both Cleveland International Film Festival and Seattle International Film Festival.
Nachman’s 2015 film Batkid Begins was bought and distributed by Warner Bros./New Line Cinema. Previously she wrote, directed and produced the documentaries Witch Hunt, which was executive produced by Sean Penn and premiered at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival; Love Hate Love, which premiered at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival; and The Human Experiment, which screened at the Mill Valley and IDFA Film Festivals. She has won a number of awards over the course of her career, including three regional Emmy Awards, The Edward R. Murrow Award, and dozens of Jury and Audience Awards at film festivals.
Born and raised in New York, Nachman graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut with a dual degree in Middle Eastern Studies and International Relations. She went on to earn a Master’s Degree from NYU in Broadcast Journalism. Nachman lives in Northern California with her husband, three children cats and dogs.