The Filmmakers

Paul R. Gregory

Producer

Paul Gregory is Cullen Professor Emeritus in the Department of Economics at the University of Houston, a research fellow at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin, and emeritus chair of the International Advisory Board of the Kiev School of Economics.

Gregory is the author or coauthor of twelve books and more than one hundred articles on economic history, the Soviet economy, transition economies, comparative economics, and economic demography. These include Women of the Gulag: Portraits of Five Remarkable Lives (Hoover Institution Press, 2013), Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin’s Kremlin: The Story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina (Hoover Institution Press, 2010), Lenin’s Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives (Hoover Institution Press, 2008), Terror by Quota (Yale, 2009), and The Political Economy of Stalinism (Cambridge, 2004), for which he received the Hewett Prize, awarded to works on the political economy of Russia, Eurasia, or Eastern Europe. He co-edited The Lost Transcripts of the Politburo (Yale, 2008). His archival work is summarized in Allocation under Dictatorship: Research in Stalin’s Archive (Journal of Economic Literature). As a producer, Gregory worked with director Marianna Yarovskaya on the documentary film Women of the Gulag, which was short-listed for the 2019 Academy Awards.

Igor Runov

Executive Producer

Dr. Igor Runov, PhD is a Russian-born, globally renowned specialist in international relations, world trade, and transportation. He is the author of several books and  a member of various academic institutions. His professional career spans over three decades and includes high-level positions in governmental bodies and international organizations, including close work with the United Nations on demining roads in Northern Afghanistan. Over the past decade, Dr. Runov has studied digital filmmaking at the New York Film Academy and has become increasingly involved in documentary filmmaking. He has produced and directed three feature documentaries: Lika, Tales of the Old Tiflis, and Quo Vadis – all of which have received international recognition. Lika was broadcast several times on Russian television. Tales of the Old Tiflis was repeatedly shown on the central TV channel in Tbilisi, Georgia. His fourth film, a short documentary titled Big Lies, was screened at various film festivals in the US and Europe and received awards. In 2016, Dr. Runov developed the concept of “living music,” or VIE CLIPS (from the French la vie, meaning “life”), and directed and produced two short films Ave Maria and Prelude—in the genre of cine-poems, or music films, where music serves as the primary structural or emotional backbone and images are created in response to it. The first international Living Music Festival will be held in 2026 in Queens, New York, at the Museum of the Moving Image.

Marianna Yarovskaya

Director/Producer

Marianna Yarovskaya is an American-Russian documentary filmmaker. Yarovskaya grew up in Moscow, Russia in a family of a actress/playwright/theater director, and a rocket scientist. Her first documentary film, Undesirables (1998), won the 2001 Student Academy Award (Student Oscar). Since then, she has worked for dozens of programs for Discovery Channel, National Geographic, History Channel, NASA, and Netflix as a producer, executive producer, and senior editor. She has credits on over 80 documentary films and TV programs, including researcher credits on two Academy Award-winning films and one Academy nominated feature film. In 2021, she was one of the producers on the Netflix series, How to Become a Tyrant. Her film Women of the Gulag was short-listed for the 91st Academy Awards.

Marianna holds an MA from the Moscow State University’s School of Journalism, and an MFA in Film/TV Production from the USC School of Cinematic Arts. She has been a member of the Producers Guild of America since 2011, and an Academy Gold member since 2017.

Mitchell Block

Executive Producer

Mitchell Block was president of Direct Cinema Limited in Santa Monica, CA. Block produced the 2011 Academy Award and multiple Emmy nominated documentary film Poster Girl. He was a consultant on short and feature nonfiction projects for HBO/Cinemax from 1998-2005. He taught independent film producing at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts since 1979. He was an executive-producer on HBO’s 2001 Academy Award-winning film Big Mama. No Lies, produced and directed by Block, was selected in 2008 for the National Register of Historical Films; other films selected from 1973 include: American Graffitti, Badlands, Mean Streets and The Sting. It won an Emmy in 1975. He was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Television Academy, founding member of BAFTA-LA, and a life member of the UFVA & IDA.

Mark Jonathan Harris

Executive Producer

Mark Harris is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, and fiction writer. His two Oscar-winning feature documentaries explore the Holocaust. The Long Way Home documents what happened to the survivors of the concentration camps in the period immediately following their liberation. Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport chronicles Britain’s rescue mission of 10,000 children in the nine months prior to World War II. In recent years Harris has focused on producing. He produced the award-winning Darfur Now and executive produced two other high profile documentary features, Spirit of the Marathon and Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders. Since 1983 he has taught filmmaking at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, where he is a Distinguished Professor. From 1990- 1996 he was the Chair of Film and TV Production. Harris was Yarovskaya’s advisor at USC, she worked on his film Kindertransport, and he consulted on her Student Academy Award-winning film, Undesirables.

Jaka Bizilj

Executive Producer

Jaka Bizilj is a Berlin-based German film producer, writer, and human rights advocate who founded the Cinema for Peace Foundation, an NGO that harnesses cinema to advance peace initiatives, human rights, and intercultural dialogue.
The foundation, established under his leadership, has organized events at international forums like the United Nations and Cannes Film Festival, screening films to spotlight global conflicts and foster advocacy. Bizilj’s most prominent humanitarian effort involved  coordinating the 2020 airlift of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny from Omsk, Russia, to a Berlin hospital after his novichok poisoning, enabling critical medical treatment amid Russian authorities’ initial obstruction.

He has also facilitated recent prisoner exchanges, including efforts to secure the release of figures like Vladimir Kara-Murza and Evan Gershkovich from Russian detention.

As a producer, Bizilj has focused on documentaries addressing atrocities and political transitions.

Sergei Guriev

Consultant

Sergei Guriev is the tenth Dean of London Business School, a position he has held since August 2024.

As Chief Executive Officer of the School, he is implementing a plan to fulfill a vision of LBS as an engaged community walking the learning journey together. With a faculty recognised for its world class academic research and a School community rich in diversity, LBS advances careers, transforms organisations and shapes policy. Its London and Dubai campuses are at the hub of a prestigious global network inspired by their own stories of life-changing impact. 

Dean Guriev is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), London. He is a Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France, an Ordinary Member of Academia Europaea, and an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Economic Association. He is also a Global Member of the Trilateral Commission. In 2006, he was selected a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. 

Prior to his appointment, Dean Guriev visited the Department of Economics at MIT on a post- doctoral fellowship and received a degree of Doctor of Science in Economics from the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics at Princeton University. He has also served as Professor of Economics and Rector at the New Economic School (NES) in Moscow, Professor of Economics and Provost at Sciences Po, Paris, and Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Gabriele Hayes

Co-Producer

Gabriele Hayes was born in former East Germany. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, she moved to the US and now resides in Los Angeles. 

Gabriele produced the documentary Skid Row Marathon (2019), which has received 30 film festival awards. She also produced One Germany, The Other Side of the Wall (2011), which featured former German President Joachim Gauck alongside political prisoners, Stasi officers, East German rock musicians, actors, and comedians.

Gabriele is a former president of the Wende Museum in Culver City, CA, a cultural center dedicated to preserving the history and culture of the Cold War. She is fluent in German, Russian, and English.

Sherril Schlesinger

Editor

Sherril began her film career in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia before relocating to Los Angeles. She has edited features, documentaries, scripted series, theme park attractions, and branded content. She’s also worked in post production as a visual effects editor and post supervisor.

Sherril’s curiosity and passion for meaningful stories have led her to work on a multitude of genres in different mediums; and her work on documentaries explore a wide range of subjects: examining the human spirit and consciousness (The Louise Hay Story/Not in God’s Name); social conscience (Reconciliation: Mandela’s Miracle/Rush To War); resilience and perseverance (Women of the Gulag/Banner On The Moon); and pop culture (Laserium).

She edited Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem, a 3D Ride for Universal Studios, which won both an Annie and a VES Award; and the 3D-animated ride, It’s Tough to Be a Bug (It’s a Bug’s Life spin off) for Disney/Pixar.

Sherril’s mission is to tell stories through film that transform, inform, and inspire –
in any format!

Leonard Feinstein

Editor

Leonard Feinstein has been editing documentary films and TV for over three decades. Among his credits are the award-winning feature docs Darfur Now, Bitter Seeds, and Mona Lisa Missing. He has cut numerous films for director Robert Kenner, and edited director Jon Dunham’s acclaimed marathon documentaries, Spirit of the Marathon II and Boston: An American Running Story. For television, his work includes the landmark PBS series Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, as well as programs for NOVA, National Geographic, American Experience and Craft in America. Robert Irwin: The Beauty of Questions, a film he directed and edited, took the Grand Prize at the 1998 International Biennale of Films on Art in Paris. Feinstein has been nominated for a Prime Time Emmy, and won an American Cinema Editors Award in 2009 for his work on the TV series Greensburg.

Mark Adler

Composer

Mark Adler is an Emmy-winning composer with over 80 film scores to his credit, including the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, inc. A regular at the Sundance Film Festival, he scored the Audience Award-winning film Picture Bride (with Youki Kudoh and Toshiro Mifune). His other film scores include Focus (based on Arthur Miller’s novel and starring William H. Macy and Laura Dern), Bottle Shock (with Alan Rickman and Chris Pine), and HBO’s The Rat Pack (with Don Cheadle, Ray Liotta and Joe Mantegna.) He has also toured as a keyboardist with former Grateful Dead vocalist Donna Jean Godchaux, a high point being an appearance at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium. Mark is currently writing a theater piece with music.

Frank Gaeta

Sound

Frank Gaeta is a renowned sound designer known for his work on Hell or High Water (2016), Captain Fantastic (2016) and 20th Century Women (2016).