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Deborah S. Esquenazi

Documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist

About

Brooklyn and Austin

Before her first feature, Esquenazi worked between Brooklyn and Austin under Deborah S. Esquenazi Productions, LLC and the Blue Cabin Films media studio. Her writing and reporting appeared in print and on the radio, from the Village Voice to the Jerusalem Post and several NPR affiliates. In 2008 she received a grant from the Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media.

Radio with teenagers

From 2011 to 2013 she was Project Director of Stories From Deep in the Heart, a Texas Folklife programme funded by the National Endowment for the Arts that teaches under-served teenagers to make radio documentaries about their lives. During her tenure the programme produced more than 85 radio documentaries and digital stories. In 2013 she received the César E. Chávez “Sí Se Puede” Award for Leadership from P.O.D.E.R.

Deborah S. Esquenazi
Filmmaker Deborah S. Esquenazi

Criminal justice in Texas

Her short films of this period dealt with crime and punishment in Texas: The Farm :: Inside the Anchor Home for Boys, made for the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism; The Kellers; and Stratagem #27, about the Tim Cole case and the Innocence Project of Texas. In 2015 she curated WAKE*UP, DEAD MEN, a retrospective of Bruce Jackson’s Texas prison-farm photography at La Peña Gallery in Austin, which benefited the Innocence Project of Texas, and was one of ten artist teams selected for Drawing Lines, a City of Austin and ArtPlace America project.

The San Antonio Four

Southwest of Salem took about seven years to make. It premiered at Tribeca in 2016, was broadcast by Investigation Discovery and received a Peabody Award, the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary and a Critics’ Choice Documentary Award, and was nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy.

Myth of Monsters

In 2018 she founded Myth of Monsters, a production company for stories that challenge myths about women, people of colour and queer people. Its first project was a scripted series adaptation of Southwest of Salem developed with the writer Jason Grote. Her semi-autobiographical narrative feature Queen of Wands, set in a Cuban-Sephardic household, was selected for the 2019 Sundance Screenwriting Lab Intensive.

Recent work

Her short El Vacío, made with Concordia Studio and The New York Times, premiered at Tribeca in 2019 and ran as a New York Times Op-Doc. In October 2020 she spoke about her work in a public conversation hosted by Latino Media Arts and Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Fellowships and labs

Early honours