Nanette Burstein

Nanette Burstein (born May 23, 1970) is an American film and television director. Burstein has produced, directed, and co-directed several documentaries including the Academy Award nominated and Sundance Special Jury Prize winning film On the Ropes. Life and career Burstein studied film at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. In 1997 she collaborated on her first film with Brett Morgen, producing and directing On the Ropes, a low-budget documentary that follows the fates of three young boxers and their trainer. The film, shot mainly on BetaSP, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary (feature length), won Special Jury Prize for Documentary at Sundance, won the Directors Guild of America's award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary. The film also won the International Documentary Association's Feature Documentary award, a Silver Spire at the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Urbanworld Film Festival Best Documentary, and the Land Grant Award at the Taos Talking Picture Festival. The film was also nominated for an Independent Spirit Award (“Truer than Fiction” award). In 1998 with Nancy Tong she co-wrote the script for Tong's matter-of-fact documentary In the Name of the Emperor of the massacre of over 300,000 Chinese civilians by the Japanese in the Rape of Nanjing in 1937.