A Son's Sacrifice

Yoni Brook is a film director and photographer. His first collaboration with Musa Syeed, A Son’s Sacrifice, won Best Documentary Short at the Tribeca Film Festival and Best Documentary Short at the International Documentary Association (IDA) Awards. Brook and Syeed also made The Calling, which is about young religious leaders. Brook has worked as a… Show more photojournalist for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, and The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal. He speaks regularly about photojournalism and has instructed students at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Brook is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and was selected to attend the CPB/PBS Producers Academy and the Berlinale Talent Campus Doc Station program. Show less

Musa Syeed is an independent filmmaker and writer. He partnered with Yoni Brook to produce A Son’s Sacrifice, which explored a father-son relationship at a halal slaughterhouse in Queens, and co-directed The Calling with Brook. Syeed was a Fulbright Fellow in Cairo, Egypt, where he focused on experimental filmmaking and Muslim identity. As a writer, he… Show more has produced original theatrical work for the Children's Museum of Manhattan and is the recipient of the 2008 Sloan Feature Film award for his screenplay on environmental issues in Kashmir. Syeed has worked as an educator in schools, community centers and prisons and was an adjunct professor of cross-cultural documentary production at Williams College in 2008. He has served as an advisor for film and television companies, including Thirteen/WNET New York. Syeed is a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in the Middle Eastern and Islamic studies department. Show less

Marco Williams is an award-winning documentary and nominated fiction film director. His directing credits include Freedom Summer (2006), I Sit Where I Want: The Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education (2004), MLK Boulevard: The Concrete Dream (2003), Two Towns of Jasper (2002), Making Peace; Rebuilding our Communities (1995), The Pursuit of Happiness: With Arianna Huffington… Show more (1994), Without A Pass (1992), In Search of Our Fathers (1991), and From Harlem To Harvard (1982). His film awards include the Beacon Award, the National Association of Black Journalists First Place Salute to Excellence Award, the George Foster Peabody Award, the Alfred I duPont Silver Baton, the 2002 Pan African Film Festival Outstanding Documentary Award, the Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival Silver Award for Best International Documentary, the 2002 DoubleTake/Full Frame grand prize, the Center For Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award and the Independent Feature Project Third Annual Anthony Radziwill Documentary Achievement Award. Two Towns of Jasper was broadcast on P.OV.In Search of Our Fathers was broadcast on Frontline and featured in the 1992 Sundance Film Festival, the 1993 Berlin International Film Festival, the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1996 “Black Male Exhibition” and the 1993 Whitney Biennial, among others. Williams received a B.A. from Harvard University in Visual and Environmental Studies, a M.A. from UCLA in Afro-American Studies and a M.F.A. from UCLA’s Producer’s Program. He is the recipient of the Institute of American Cultures Research Grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a Creative Artists Program grant. Show less