Julia Haslett makes expressionistic documentaries about contemporary and historical subjects. She is particularly interested in questions of empathy, attention, and the complex dynamics of bearing witness. Her first feature-length documentary, An Encounter with Simone Weil won Michael Moore’s Special Founder’s Prize at the Traverse City Film Festival and was a New York Magazine Critic’s Pick. She is producer/director of the highly acclaimed Worlds Apart series about healthcare inequities, and producer of the companion documentary Hold Your Breath (PBS). She has worked at WGBH-Boston, the Discovery Channel, and as a Filmmaker-in-Residence at Stanford University’s Center for Biomedical Ethics. Her latest film Pushed up the Mountain is a poetic documentary about plants and the people who care for them, shot on location in China and the UK. It has screened at venues around the world, including Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, Trento Film Festival, and the Scottish National Gallery. Haslett is an associate professor in the Department of Communication, where she teaches media production courses focused on documentary filmmaking.