Paula Eiselt Paula Eiselt is a Primetime Emmy–nominated, Peabody and duPont-Columbia Award–winning filmmaker, and a two-time Sundance Film Festival director and Jury Prize winner. She is known for her journalistic rigor and for telling timely, intelligent cinematic stories led by strong-willed characters. Her films have been distributed on global platforms including Disney+, Hulu, Max, PBS’s POV, and ARTE, and have screened at over 100 film festivals worldwide, including Sundance, SXSW, and Hot Docs.

Her award-winning documentaries include 93Queen (HBO Max / POV), Aftershock (Sundance / Hulu / Disney+), and Under G-d (Sundance 2023 / POV Shorts). Her latest feature, We Met at Grossinger’s, recently premiered at DOC NYC 2025.

Aftershock premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Documentary Competition, where it received the Special Jury Award: Impact for Change. The film was acquired by Disney’s Onyx Collective and ABC News Studios and released on Hulu and Disney+ in July 2022. It was subsequently named a 2023 Peabody Award winner, a 2024 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award winner, and earned a 2023 Primetime Emmy nomination for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking, as well as two Critics Choice Documentary Award nominations, including Best Documentary Feature. Additional honors include the Full Frame Film Festival’s Kathleen Bryan Edwards Award for Human Rights and the NIHCM Television and Journalism Award.

Paula’s most recent release, Under G-d, premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival in the Documentary Shorts Competition and was acquired by PBS’s POV Shorts. Released in July 2023, the film won the Local Jury Award at the 2023 Palm Springs International ShortFest and the Juried Prize at the 2023 PBS Short Film Festival.

Her feature documentary debut, 93Queen, a co-production with ITVS / PBS and ARTE / SWR, premiered at Hot Docs and was released theatrically across the U.S. and Canada, including a six-week holdover at NYC’s IFC Center. The film later streamed on Max in the U.S. and Latin America, broadcast nationally on PBS’s POV, and aired internationally on ARTE (France and Germany), UR (Sweden), yes Docu (Israel), and CBC (Canada). 93Queen screened at over 75 film festivals worldwide and was selected for the U.S. State Department’s American Film Showcase.

Paula has been a Concordia Studio Fellow, Sundance Producers Summit Fellow, IFP / Gotham Filmmaker Lab Fellow, and Wyncote Fellow. Her work has been supported by organizations including ITVS, the Sundance Institute, Just Films | Ford Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, the International Documentary Association, and Jewish Story Partners.

In 2022, IndieWire named Paula one of 22 Rising Filmmakers to Watch, and she was also recognized as a DOC NYC 40 Under 40 honoree. She is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she earned a double major in Film Production and Cinema Studies. Paula is a member of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the International Association of Press Photographers, and New York Women in Film & Television.