Emily Kunstler (born June 24, 1978) is an American documentary filmmaker. Kunstler grew up in New York City's West Village neighborhood.
Kunstler is the daughter of lawyer William Kunstler, famous for his historic civil rights and anti-war cases and Margaret Ratner Kunstler, prominent New York human rights attorney.[1]
In 1999, Kunstler co-founded Off Center Media[2] with her sister Sarah Kunstler. Off Center is a documentary production company that claimed to expose injustice in the criminal justice system through the creation and circulation of media.
Kunstler completed a celebratory documentary about her father entitled that screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009.[3] The film was a co-production of the Independent Television Service and aired on the PBS series P.O.V.. In 2009, the film was nominated for the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2010, the film was among 15 films shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for the 83rd Academy Awards.[4] Her film Tulia, Texas: Scenes from the Drug War[5] won Best Short Documentary at the Woodstock Film Festival (2002) and her film Getting Through to the President[6] won the Jury Prize at the Black Maria Film Festival and the Audience Choice Award at the Portland International Short Short Film Festival (2004).
In 2021 Kunstler completed Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America,[7] which premiered at South by Southwest Film Festival in 2021[8] and won the Audience Award in the Documentary Spotlight Category.[9] The film was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics[10] and theatrically released January 14, 2022.