Omar Bader was only eight years old when his father Sam, a film producer, was arrested and sentenced to a 24 year prison sentence. Now twenty-three, Omar struggles under the weight of his father’s long absence. But through a creative collaboration facilitated by prison visits and phone calls, Sam helps Omar summon the courage to pursue his artistic dreams and begins to come to peace with his past.
About The Team
Nadav Kurtz is a filmmaker whose work has been shown at such festivals as Sundance, True/False, Sheffield, and been showcased by The Criterion Channel, PBS’ POV, the NYTimes Op-Docs, Vimeo Staff Picks and Sundance Doc Club. His directorial debut, PARAISO, won Best Documentary Short at multiple festivals, was nominated for a Cinema Eye award and was short-listed for an Academy Award. Born in Israel to a Jewish mother and a Japanese father, Nadav grew up in England and Switzerland before moving to the United States. He graduated with honors from the University of Chicago with a degree in English Literature. He has two decades of experience as an editor working as an editor on documentaries, fiction films and branded work before transitioning to directing. He has worked as a director on a number of campaigns related to immigration and cross-cultural identity, including an award winning series of thirty-five short documentaries celebrating immigration for the City of Chicago, as well as branded short films about the artists Ana Roldán and Rubén Ortiz Torres and is a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective. UNTITLED SAM PROJECT is his first feature film.
Diane Quon is an Academy Award-nominated producer who worked as a marketing executive in LA at NBC and at Paramount Pictures before moving back to her hometown of Chicago. Diane has produced the documentaries: Oscar and Emmy nominated, Peabody and Sundance award-winning film, MINDING THE GAP (Hulu, POV) directed by Bing Liu; THE DILEMMA OF DESIRE (Showtime) with director Maria Finitzo; Emmy-nominated FINDING YINGYING (MTVDocs) directed by Jiayan “Jenny” Shi; FOR THE LEFT HAND (PBS) directed by Gordon Quinn and Leslie Simmer; WUHAN WUHAN (POV) directed by Yung Chang; BAD AXE (IFCFilms) by David Siev; and SURF NATION (Mountainfilm Telluride 2022). Upcoming documentaries include the UNTITLED SAM AND OMAR PROJECT, THE UNTITLED 19TH* NEWS FILM, and an UNTITLED HBO PROJECT. Also in development is a fiction film based on a New York Times best-seller and Bing Liu’s first original screenplay. Diane is an AMPAS and PGA member, the recipient of the 2020 Cinereach Producer Award and is a Sundance Creative Producing Fellow and a Film Independent Fellow.
