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Nancy Schwartzman ’93: 2023 Sundance Film Festival Selection

Ali Schwartz ’10
Director and producer Nancy Schwartzman's ’93 new documentary Victim/Suspect will screen as an official selection of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Documentary Competition. In the film, investigative journalist Rae de Leon travels nationwide to uncover and examine a shocking pattern: Young women tell the police they’ve been sexually assaulted, but instead of finding justice, they’re charged with the crime of making a false report, arrested, and even imprisoned by the system they believed would protect them. The documentary was produced in partnership with Motto Pictures and the Center for Investigative Reporting Studios as a Netflix original film.

From Sundance Film Festival:
Director Nancy Schwartzman crafts a deeply compelling and provocative investigative documentary, sure to elicit both empathy and outrage, that stands as a powerful testament to the carefully constructed work of determined reporters like de Leon. Victim/Suspect illuminates, with precision and focus, how local and nationwide systemic policing policies both motivate detectives to treat victims like suspects, and directly impact not only these vulnerable women’s cases, but also their lives.

Nominated for a Peabody Award, Schwartzman's debut documentary Roll Red Roll exposed the notorious Steubenville, Ohio high school sexual assault case and uncovered the social-media fueled "boys will be boys" culture that let it happen. Roll Red Roll garnered 7 best documentary awards, premiered in 2018 at the Tribeca Film Festival and Hot Docs, and has screened at over 40 film festivals worldwide. Schwartzman's recent non-fiction book Roll Red Roll: Rape, Power and Football in the American Heartland released in July 2022 with Hachette and received stellar reviews from the New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus and Library Journal. This is a deep dive into the Steubenville, Ohio case and a follow-up from the award-winning film.


Video: Meet the Artist 2023: Nancy Schwartzman on “Victim/Suspect” (Sundance Institute)
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The Shipley School is a private, coeducational day school for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students, located in Bryn Mawr, PA. Through our commitment to educational excellence, we develop within each student a love of learning and a desire for compassionate participation in the world.