Jehane Noujaim (, ) (born May 17, 1974) is an American documentary film director best known for her films Control Room, Startup.com, Pangea Day and The Square. She has co-directed The Great Hack and The Vow with Karim Amer.
Background
Noujaim was born to an Egyptian-Syrian-Lebanese father and an American mother who was born in Connecticut. She was raised in Kuwait and Cairo and moved to Boston by the age of 10, in 1984. She attended Milton Academy.
In 1992, Noujaim matriculated to Harvard University, where she initially intended to study medicine.
Career
2000-2005
While studying at Harvard University, Noujaim worked alongside her fellow peers towards developing Blue Hill Avenue, about the operations of gangs in Roxbury, Boston.
In 2002, before her graduation, Noujaim was awarded the Gardiner fellowship under which she directed Mokattam, an Arabic film about a garbage-collecting village near Cairo in Egypt.
Noujaim joined the MTV news and documentary division as a segment producer for the documentary series UNfiltered.
In 2001, she left to produce and direct Startup.com under the guidance of documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker in association with Pennebaker Hegedus Films. The feature-length documentary won the DGA and IDA Awards for best documentary. From collaboration with Pennebaker and Hegedus throughout her career, Noujaim's filmmaking techniques take insight from cinéma verité. Noujaim was awarded the Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award in 2004.
In 2004, she directed the feature-length film Control Room, a documentary about US Central Command and its relations with Al Jazeera and other news organizations that covered the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The film showed the unfolding of war through the descriptions and contributions of entities in media outlets. It also displayed information on the impact of skewed information during the Iraq war from different media source's operations and public motives. Noujaim achieves this through live footage from her time in Qatar of the war as well as interviews from news room correspondents.
Through this project, Noujaim wanted to portray images of war and question how viewers perceive them. This made her the first and youngest woman to do so. She also received a nomination for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Documentary Screenplay, shared with co-writer Julia Bacha. In 2007, she co-directed (with Sherief El Katsha) the film Shayfeen.com which was broadcast as part of the WhyDemocracy project. In 2012 she released Rafea: Solar Mama (which she directed with Mona Eldaeif). A documentary about a group of women leaving their villages to learn about solar engineering, only to return and solar power their own society.
2012-2017
In 2013, she released The Square, a film following the Egyptian revolution and the inspiration it has given to the world. While the film was being shot, Noujaim went missing, being found after an activist brought attention to her disappearance. Also during the duration of filming, Noujaim was arrested on three occasions. During the film's release period, the piece was withheld from viewers in Egypt due to censorship regulations. In an act to ensure Egyptian citizens saw the film, Noujaim released the film online in addition to the film being pirated in the country. The Square also won critical acclaim in the 2013 Sundance Film Festival & the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.
Noujaim contributed to a book in 2016 which included a collection of statements by individuals on their experiences travelling to or visiting global squares. It was released on July 24, 2019, by Netflix. Initially, Noujaim and Amer meant out to make a documentary revolving around the Sony Pictures hack, however the film evolved and shifted course as they started looking at how people's minds have been hacked and changed.
Noujaim and Amer directed The Vow a documentary series revolving around NXIVM and its leader Keith Raniere, which premiered in August 2020 on HBO. The second and final season premiered in October 2022, with Noujaim primarily directing without Amer. Noujaim previously took a NXIVM course after being recruited by Sara Bronfman.
In 2022, Noujaim served as an executive producer on Flight/Risk directed by Amer and Omar Mullick for Amazon Studios. In 2023, Noujaim served as an executive producer on Defiant directed by Amer, focusing on diplomacy and disinformation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Noujaim is directing and executive producing alongside Vikram Gandhi, The Man Will Burn, a documentary series revolving around Burning Man. It will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival on June 9, 2026.
Pangea Day
After winning the TED Prize, Noujaim used her wish to organize Pangea Day, a live videoconference that took place in New York City, Rio de Janeiro, London, Dharamsala, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Kigali on May 10, 2008. The show was internationally broadcast over four hours through internet, television and mobile phones. It featured films, speakers, and music. The purpose of the event was to screen the work of filmmakers who created pieces around cultural reflection that posed conversation starters among the audience to unite people globally through film.
Filmography
Film
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Year
! Title
!width=65| Director
!width=65| Producer
!width=65| Notes
|-
| 2000
| Down from the Mountain
|
|
| Cinematographer
|-
| 2001
| Startup.com
|
|
| Also cinematographer, editor
|-
| 2002
| Only the Strong Survive
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|
| Cinematographer
|-
| 2004
| Control Room
|
|
| Also cinematographer
|-
| 2006
| Encounter Point
|
|
|
|-
| 2009
| Budrus
|
|
|
|-
| 2012
| Rafea: Solar Mama
|
|
|
|-
| 2013
| The Square
|
|
| Also cinematographer
|-
| 2017
| The Breadwinner
|
|
|
|-
| 2019
| The Great Hack
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|
|
|-
| 2022
| Flight/Risk
|
|
|
|-
| 2023
| Defiant
|
|
|
|-
|}
Television
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Year
! Title
!width=65| Director
!width=65| Producer
!width=65| Notes
|-
| 2019
| Ramy
|
|
| Episode: "Cairo Cowboy"
|-
| 2020
| The Vow
|
|
|
|-
| 2026
| The Man Will Burn
|
|
|
|-
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Awards
!Year
!Award
|-
|2001
|DGA Award for Best Documentary
|-
|2001
|IDA Award for Best Documentary
|-
|2004
|Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award
|-
|2006
|TED Prize
|-
|2014
|DGA Award
|}