The Daughters of the Forest

Samantha Grant is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist, and educator. Her approach to storytelling is influenced by both her undergraduate degree in American Studies/Literature from Yale University and her Master’s of Journalism degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Through her San Francisco-based production company GUSH productions, Grant has created work for clients including MTV, ABC, PBS, CNN, NPR, PRI, FRONTLINE, and Al Jazeera International. In 2007, she was named a Carnegie/Knight fellow as part of the News 21 Initiative on the Future of Journalism and in 2011 was named a BAVC MediaMaker Fellow. A Fragile Trust: Plagiarism, Power, and Jayson Blair at The New York Times, Grant’s first feature documentary, was released theatrically and aired nationally on PBS in May 2014 as part of Independent Lens. Grant's film Daughters of the Forest tells the story of a revolutionary girls high school being built in one of the last pristine forests in South America. When she’s not shooting or producing independent documentaries, you can find Grant lecturing at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and Stanford’s Knight Fellowship program.

Documentary filmmaker Carl Byker has produced more than 30 hours of television for PBS, including multiple episodes for the series FRONTLINE and American Experience. His films have won the Primetime Emmy for best non-fiction series of the year, the Columbia/Dupont Silver Baton, the Independent Documentary Association award for Best Series of the Year, the Kodak “Vision Award” from the Producers’ Guild of America, the Peabody Award, and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for Best Collaboration for a project with FRONTLINE, NPR, and ProPublica. His films have also been nominated six times by the Writers’ Guild of America for Best Non-Fiction Television Script of the Year and have won the award twice.