Julia Reichert

Ohio-based Julia Reichert (June 16, 1946 – December 1, 2022) is a four-time Academy Award nominee and Oscar winner for her documentary work, which explores class, gender and race. Julia’s student film Growing Up Female was the first feature documentary of the modern Women's Movement, and was selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. Her films Union Maids and Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists, (with Jim Klein) were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Feature Documentary, as were The Last Truck (as a short) and American Factory 美国工 (with Steven Bognar) which won the 2020 academy award. Her film A Lion in the House (also with Bognar) premiered at Sundance and won the Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking. Reichert and Bognar’s films A Lion in the House (2006), American Factory 美国工 (2019), and 9to5: The Story of a Movement (2020) are available on Netflix.

Reichert & Bognar’s newest film, Untitled Dave Chappelle Documentary , is an official selection of the Tribeca Film Festival. The film has premiered at Radio City Music Hall, The Kennedy Center, and The Hollywood Bowl.

Julia is co-founder of New Day Films, the independent film distribution co-op. She was an advisor on the creation of the IFP and the PBS series P.O.V, and is co-founder of Indie Caucus. She mentored dozens of emerging filmmakers over the years as a Professor of Motion Pictures at Wright State University. Reichert is also the author of Doing It Yourself, the first book on self-distribution in independent film. She is a member of both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and the Television Academy. In 2018, the International Documentary Association (IDA) gave Julia their Career Achievement Award. In 2019, the Museum of Modern Art and the Wexner Center for the Arts teamed up to present a traveling retrospective of Julia’s films. She is also a proud mom and grandma.