SOROS

BIOGRAPHIES

JESSE DYLAN | Director/Executive Producer

A prolific director, immersive storyteller, and visionary problem-solver, Jesse Dylan strives to be in service of ideas that change the world both inside and outside of his creative agency Wondros. Vibrant in his passions and dedicated to creating thoughtful, engaging content, he is the energy behind his projects’ mission to break barriers and generate large-scale impact. As the mind behind some of the most successful campaigns in commercial television, print and interactive advertising, Jesse has dedicated his career to telling the stories of some of the world’s most innovative individuals and organizations.

PRISCILLA COHEN | Producer

Priscilla has created award-winning content that is both socially responsible and visually compelling, bringing an authentic and compassionate voice to each new project. In 2008 she worked alongside filmmaker Jesse Dylan to produce the Emmy-Award winning Yes We Can video on behalf of then-candidate Barack Obama. Priscilla has collaborated with some of the world’s most innovative people and organizations, bringing an authentic and compassionate voice to each new project. Prior to working with Dylan, Priscilla was a film executive at several companies including Miramax, Geffen Pictures, and Robert Redford’s Wildwood Productions. Some of the films that she worked on include: Interview with a Vampire, A River Runs Through It, The Cider House Rules and Within the Whirlwind which won the European Time For Peace award. She also served as director of The Performing Arts Program at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and has a background in the performing arts, having worked at several Off-Broadway venues including The National Theater Institute, the Padua Hills Playwrights’ Festival, and The Magic Theater.

MICHAEL HOFACRE | Principal Editor/Co-Producer

Michael Hofacre has been part of the editing crew on over 40 films, working alongside directors such as Milos Forman, Michael Mann, Tran an Hung, Adam McKay, Judd Apatow, Danny DeVito, and Jodie Foster.  Feature film credits include the award-winning films Winter in the Blood, Frankie Go Boom, and Shelter.  Documentary features include the award-winning films Political Animals, Walking Man, and Surviving Friendly Fire.  

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GEORGE SOROS

George Soros is founder and chair of Soros Fund Management LLC and the Open Society Foundations. Born in Budapest in 1930, Soros survived the Nazi occupation during World War II and fled communist-dominated Hungary in 1947 for England, where he graduated from the London School of Economics. He then settled in the United States, where he accumulated a large fortune through the international investment fund he founded and managed.

Soros has been active as a philanthropist since 1979, when he began providing funds to help black students attend Cape Town University in apartheid South Africa. The Open Society Foundations today support individuals and organizations in more than 120 countries, with an annual budget of more than one billion dollars, working to promote the values of open society, human rights, and transparency.

Soros writes regularly on politics, society, and economics, and has authored over a dozen books.

 Vital Pictures was founded by veteran filmmakers Jesse Dylan and Priscilla Cohen out of their desire to craft narratives in a way that sparks and elevates a conversation, and unites audiences, grounded particularly in social justice causes. The company is currently working on a film about the last surviving members of the U.S. Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Soros is Vital Pictures' first documentary.

Abramorama is the preeminent global theatrical distribution and rights management partner for documentary and music films and is recognized for the consistent high quality of its work on award winning features. An innovator in the focused, personalized form of film marketing, promotion, distribution and live, event and digital cinema, Abramorama provides invaluable alternatives to filmmakers while continuing to trail-blaze exciting new pathways to defined audiences.

Over the course of nearly 20 years, Abramorama has successfully distributed and marketed hundreds of films, including Ron Howard’s Grammy Award®-winning The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years; Stanley Nelson’s Miles Davis: Birth of The Cool; Atlantic Records and Melanie Martinez’ K-12; John McDermott’s Jimi Hendrix: Electric Church; Amir Bar-Lev's Long Strange Trip – The Untold Story of the Grateful Dead; Tabbert Fiiller’s The Public Image Is Rotten; Danny Clinch and Pearl Jam’s Let’s Play Two; Corbett Redford and Green Day’s Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk; John Scheinfeld’s Chasing Trane – The John Coltrane Documentary; Roberta Grossman and Nancy Spielberg’s Who Will Write Our History; Brett Bern's BANG! The Bert Berns Story; Brett Morgen and National Geographic’s seminal Jane; Asif Kapadia’s Senna; Neil Young’s vast catalog of Bernard Shakey Productions; Cameron Crowe’s Pearl Jam Twenty; Sacha Gervasi’s Spirit Award-winning Anvil! The Story of Anvil; Banksy’s Academy Award® nominated & Spirit Award-winning Exit Through the Gift Shop; Laurie Anderson’s New York Times critics’ pick, Heart of a Dog; Showtime’s National Board of Review Winner Listen to Me Marlon; Academy Award®-nominee and IDA Best Documentary Winner The Look of Silence; and the episodic multi-platform series Deconstructing The Beatles. Abramorama is a founding partner of The Seventh Art Stand program, an act of cinematic solidarity against Islamophobia, that ran in more than 50 theaters across the United States in May of 2017. Abramorama launched a conscious films imprint, Mangurama, in 2018 alongside its music-centric film fund focused on the global release of iconic music documentaries.  In January of 2019 the company launched the live multicast streaming enterprise ABCinemaNOW.com with the global live introduction, interstitial programming, and Q&A from Paris, France for the 55-country release of Who Will Write Our History. In 2020 Abramorama Selects was launched providing a gateway for select films across global VOD platforms. For more information visit abramorama.com.