EMILY KUNSTLER & SARAH KUNSTLER (PRODUCERS/DIRECTORS)

Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler run Off Center Media (www.off-center.com), a production company that produces documentaries exposing injustice in the criminal justice system. The sisters founded Off Center Media in 2000, and have produced, directed, and edited a number of short documentaries, including Tulia, Texas: Scenes from the Drug War (2002), which won Best Documentary Short at the Woodstock Film Festival, and was instrumental in winning exoneration for 46 wrongfully convicted people; and Getting Through to the President (2004), which has aired on the Sundance Channel.

Other notable Off Center Media projects include A Pattern of Exclusion: The Trial of Thomas Miller-El (2002), a documentary about racism at the trial of Miller-El, who had been on death row in Texas since 1985; The Norfolk Four: A Miscarriage of Justice (2006), about four young men in Norfolk, Virginia, who falsely confessed to a rape-murder that they did not commit; and Executing the Insane: The Case of Scott Panetti (2007). These films have contributed to campaigns to secure pardons, stay executions and convince decision makers to reopen cases. William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe is the sisters’ first documentary feature.

Emily Kunstler graduated in 2000 from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Film and Video. She was a video producer for Democracy Now!, an independent national television and radio news program, and a studio art fellow with the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2004.

Sarah Kunstler graduated from Yale University with a BA in Photography in 1998 and from Columbia Law School with a JD in 2004. She is currently a criminal defense attorney practicing in the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York.

The sisters were awarded the L’Oreal Women of Worth Vision Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and the Special Jury Prize for Best New Filmmakers at the Traverse City Film Festival.