Our Team
Jim LeBrecht
FOUNDING MEMBER
James LeBrecht has over 40 years experience as a film and theater sound designer and mixer, author, disability rights activist, filmmaker and founding member of FWD-Doc.
Jim began his career in the theater, working as the resident sound designer at Berkeley Repertory Theatre for 10 years.
His film mixing credits include the documentaries Minding The Gap, Unrest, The Force, The Island President, The Waiting Room, The Kill Team, and Audrie and Daisy.
Jim co-authored Sound and Music for the Theatre: the art and technique of design. Now in its 4th edition, the book is used as a textbook all over the world.
Jim’s work as an activist began in high school and continues to this day. Jim is currently a board member at the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, which works for the rights of the disabled through education, legislation and litigation.
Nicole Newnham and Jim directed and produced the feature length documentary Crip Camp. Crip Camp tells the story of a revolutionary summer camp “for the handicapped,” Camp Jened, which ignited a community of people with disabilities to fight for civil rights and independence.
Day Al-Mohamed
FOUNDING MEMBER
Day Al-Mohamed is an author, filmmaker, and disability policy strategist, and founding member of FWD-Doc. She is co-author of the novel Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn, is a regular host on Idobi Radio's Geek Girl Riot with an audience of more than 80,000 listeners, and her most recent novella, The Labyrinth’s Archivist, was published in 2019 from Falstaff Books. She is a member of Women in Film and Video, a Docs in Progress Film Fellowship alumna, and a graduate of the VONA/Voices Writing Workshop. However, she is most proud of being invited to teach a workshop on storytelling at the White House in February 2016.
Day is a disability policy executive with more than fifteen years of experience. She presents often on the representation of disability in media, most recently at the American Bar Association, SXSW, and New York ComiCon. A proud member of Coast Guard Auxiliary (5th District Southern Region), she lives in Washington DC with her wife, N.R. Brown. The Invalid Corps, a documentary about disabled veterans' contributions during the Civil War, was her first documentary as a blind filmmaker.
Lindsey Dryden
FOUNDING MEMBER
Lindsey Dryden is an Emmy®-winning filmmaker based in the UK and US, who produces and directs feature length films, shorts and TV. She is the founder of Little By Little Films, which is led by underrepresented voices and prioritises storytelling by and about LGBTQ folks, women, and D/deaf and disabled people. As a queer filmmaker with a disability she brings an authentic route to those rarely seen perspectives. She’s also a proud co-founder of FWD-Doc member of Queer Producers Collective and, a fellow of BAFTA/BFI Flare, Guiding Lights (mentored by Andrew Haigh), Good Pitch, HotDocs Forum and Sundance Creative Distribution Initiative, and the recipient of the 2019 Simon Relph Memorial Bursary. She is a full voting member of the British Academy of Film & Television Arts (BAFTA) and a 2022 Sundance Institute Documentary Producers Lab Fellow.
Lindsey produced Sundance Special Jury Award-winning and Oscar shortlisted Unrest with director Jennifer Brea (2017, PBS Independent Lens/Netflix), produced Emmy®-winning Trans In America with directors Daresha Kyi and Cary Cronenwett (2018, ACLU/Conde Nast), co-produced multi-award-winning Unrest VR (2017, Tribeca), and Exec Produced BIFA-nominated The Forgotten C (2020) and Ahead of the Curve (2020, Frameline/Starz) with an all-female LGBTQ+ crew. Her directing credits include Lost and Sound (2012, SXSW), Jackie Kay: One Person, Two Names (2017, Tate Queer British Art) and Close Your Eyes And Look At Me (2009, True/False). She co-authored Unrest’s DocSociety Hi5 Impact Case Study and Sundance Creative Distribution Case Study, and with a background as an Impact Producer, consults on and crafts innovative audience engagement strategies.
Lindsey’s work has been selected for SXSW, Tribeca, Sundance, HotDocs, True/False, CPH:Dox, MIFF and Sheffield Doc/Fest, screened at Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Art Of The Real, enjoyed international theatrical release, and broadcast on Netflix, PBS Independent Lens, BBC and Channel 4. She is known for telling stories that allow audiences unique access to unexpected, moving and gripping new worlds, for nurturing bold new voices, and for advocating for opportunities for underrepresented storytellers in the film industry.
Alysa Nahmias
FOUNDING MEMBER
Alysa is an award-winning filmmaker and founder of AJNA. She directed and produced the Emmy-nominated feature documentary Art & Krimes by Krimes (2021) featuring artist Jesse Krimes and distributed by MTV Documentary Films, The New Bauhaus (2019) about visionary artist László Moholy-Nagy, and Unfinished Spaces (2011, co-directed with Benjamin Murray) about the Cuban National Art Schools, which won a 2012 Independent Spirit Award, was distributed by PBS and Netflix, and is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
As a producer, her work includes the 2023 Emmy-nominated documentary Wildcat directed by Melissa Lesh and Trevor Frost for Amazon Studios, The Tuba Thieves directed by Allison O’Daniel which premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2023, and the Emmy-nominated and Oscar-shortlisted Unrest directed by Jennifer Brea, which won an a Special Jury Award at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and was distributed by Netflix and PBS Independent Lens. Her producing credits also include the scripted feature No Light and No Land Anywhere, directed by Amber Sealey with executive producer Miranda July (Jury Award winner, LA Film Festival 2016), and the documentaries A Decent Home, directed by Sara Terry (DOC NYC, Denver 2021); What We Left Unfinished, directed by Mariam Ghani (Berlinale, SFFILM 2019) distributed by Dekanalog and Criterion; I Didn’t See You There, directed by Reid Davenport (Sundance 2022); and American Masters’ Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq directed by Nancy Buirski with creative advisor Martin Scorsese (NY Film Festival, Berlinale 2013).
Alysa has been featured in Filmmaker Magazine as an independent film innovator. She is a 2020 Film Independent Fellow and a 2019 Sundance Institute Momentum Fellow. She was the co-author of a Sundance Creative Distribution Case Study on Unrest. In addition to winning awards at prestigious film festivals around the world, her films have been exhibited at venues ranging from the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC to the ICA in London to San Quentin State Prison in California. She holds degrees from New York University and Princeton University. Alysa is a founding member of FWD-Doc as an ally who is committed to advocating for disability rights and inclusion, and she is a member of the Documentary Producers Alliance (DPA), the Television Academy, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Kyla Harris
ADVISING MEMBER
Kyla Harris is a filmmaker, writer and activist who applies an intersectional approach to all of her work. She is a member of the Disability Screen Advisory Group for the British Film Institute (BFI) that advises and supports inclusivity in the industry, including the most recent British Film and Television Awards (BAFTA) Review. Kyla has been a panelist for a number of organisations including the BFI, Birds Eye View and Hot Docs Festival, often advocating for people who share her own identities. Along with Filmmakers With Disabilities (FWD Doc) she co-wrote A Toolkit for Inclusion & Accessibility: Changing the Narrative of Disability in Documentary Film in association with Doc Society and Netflix as well as The FWD-Doc Engagement Pack in association with Doc Society and the BFI. Her short film It’s Personal, that she co-directed and wrote, was commissioned by the Film Video Umbrella and is their most viewed film to date. She is currently co-writing a television series in development with Ash Atalla and Roughcut TV for Channel 4.
Amanda Upson
INTERIM DIRECTOR
Amanda Upson left traditional legal practice to produce movies, transitioning from labor and employment law at a large firm to independent producer. Her first film, Magnum Opus, a spy thriller with timely themes, secured wide distribution in 2018 and a spot at the Virginia Film Festival. She produced A Long March, a 2022 Better Angels Lavine Fellowship Recipient. In A Long March, three Filipino-American veterans trace their paths from war to erasure by the US Government, marching from an obscured history to the Federal courts, up to the steps of Congress in search of promises denied. She produced Renegades: Kitty O’Neil (w.t.) and serves as consulting producer for PBS' American Masters projects.
Amanda focuses on advocacy of underrepresented in front of and behind the camera via producing and consulting, as well as opening up a pipeline for same. She serves as a mentor to students and alumni of her alma mater, University of Virginia, as well as attorneys in her home state of Colorado, where she co-founded and serves on the Board of Denver Mother Attorney Mentoring Association. She was appointed to the Colorado Task Force on Attorney Well-Being, was named one of FORBES 40 to Watch Over 40, and she is admitted to the bar of the US Supreme Court.
Amanda is active in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Bar Association and Colorado Disability Bar Association. She served on the Labor Committee (forthcoming Labor Guidelines) and currently serves on Diversity and Structural Equality Committee of DPA, she was selected for RespectAbility’s Entertainment Professionals Lab, Summer 2021, for Realscreen’s 2022 DIALOG Mentorship Program, and for DOC NYC’s 2022 Documentary New Leaders program.