2026 Teaneck International Film Festival Jurors
Kahane Corn Cooperman is an Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker and 11-time Emmy and Peabody award-winning producer, director, and showrunner. Most recently, she directed and produced the award-winning feature documentary CREEDE U.S.A.. Kahane is known for her focus on emotional, intimate, powerful storytelling and has made films on subjects as wide-ranging as mental health, civility’s role in democracy, life with autism, a violin’s journey, and ice sculpting. Select credits include the Academy Award-nominated JOE’S VIOLIN, THE ANTIDOTE, THE ME YOU CAN’T SEE, and THE NEW YORKER PRESENTS. Kahane’s work has premiered at festivals including Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, HotDocs, DocNYC, DC/DOX and IDFA and can be seen on PBS, HBO, AppleTV+, and Amazon. Kahane started out answering phones at the renowned Maysles Films and was a longtime co-executive producer of THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART along the way. She is member of AMPAS and the DGA.
Lisa Cortés is a two-time Emmy-winning, Grammy-nominated director and producer known for creating bold, transformative stories. Two films executive-produced by Cortés have won Academy Awards®, most recently All The Empty Rooms, which won Best Documentary Short Film in 2026. A champion of the underrepresented and an instigator of cultural change, Cortés is renowned for discovering unique voices and stories, guiding projects through development and production, and bringing them successfully to market. In 2025, Hulu’s monthly Top Ten Most Watched Series featured Murder Has Two Faces, produced and directed by Cortés. Hosted by Robin Roberts, the series explores the impact of race on how true crime stories are investigated by police and covered by the media. The series was recognized in 2026 as Best documentary at the National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Awards. Her 2023 film Little Richard: I Am Everything (CNN Films) premiered as the opening-night selection of the U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance. The film earned 26 award nominations, including a Grammy nomination for Best Music Film, and was acclaimed for its unfiltered portrayal of the rock ’n’ roll legend. Also premiering at Sundance was Invisible Beauty (Magnolia Pictures), a documentary about fashion pioneer Bethann Hardison that Cortés produced and which won the NAACP Award for Outstanding Documentary Film. Cortés’s acclaimed documentaries also include The Space Race (National Geographic Documentary Films), an exploration of African American astronauts at NASA and in space that won the prestigious duPont-Columbia Award; All In: The Fight for Democracy (Amazon), which traces the ongoing struggle for voting rights; and the Emmy-winning The Apollo (HBO), chronicling the historic theater’s role in African American culture. Cortés first gained global recognition in 2009 as executive producer of Precious, which received six Academy Award® nominations and won two, as well as the Sundance Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize for Best Drama.
Through her New York-based multimedia production company, Cortés Filmworks, she produces scripted and unscripted projects. A graduate of Yale University, Cortés is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors Guild of America. She serves on the boards of Film at Lincoln Center, Independent Television Service ITVS), and Women Make Movies. In 2025, she received the prestigious Muse Award from New York Women in Film & Television and the DGA She Persisted Award.
