Meet the filmmaker

Rebecca Richman Cohen is an Emmy Award nominated documentary filmmaker and, since 2011, a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. Her directorial debut, WAR DON DON (HBO), won the Special Jury Prize at the SXSW Film Festival. Salon called her second feature, CODE OF THE WEST (America ReFramed), “one of the best movies about America’s drug war.” In 2016 she produced UNTOUCHABLE, which won the Albert Maysles New Documentary Director Award at the Tribeca Film Festival. She has produced a number of short advocacy films for venues and platforms ranging from the New York Times Op-Docs series to screenings in the Department of Justice and Congress. Rebecca was profiled in Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces in Independent Film as an “up-and-comer poised to shape the next generation of independent film.” She currently teaches two courses at Harvard Law School on the intersection of law and visual media with a focus on the criminal legal system and human rights. She has also taught classes at Rhode Island School of Design, American University’s Human Rights Institute, and Columbia University. She has been a fellow with a number of institutions: Soros Justice Fellow (2012), Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society (2015), Harvard’s Film Study Center (2019) and a Nieman Visiting Fellow (2022). She is currently affiliated faculty at Critical Media Practice, a program of Harvard’s Graduate School in Arts and Sciences. Rebecca graduated with a BA in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from Brown University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.