Inbal B. Lessner

Inbal B. Lessner, ACE, is an Emmy and Eddie nominated producer and editor. Inbal produced and edited Brave Miss World (2013), an independent documentary about Linor Abargil, who was raped 6 weeks before she won the Miss World pageant, and her crusade to reach out to fellow survivors while trying to keep her own rapist behind bars. The film premiered at AFI Docs, was screened to members of U.S. Congress, and launched as a Netflix Exclusive in May 2014. It received an Emmy nomination for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking and was the centerpiece of a vast international outreach campaign. It was re-launched on Netflix in early 2018. Between 2015-2018 Inbal completed seven one-hour episodes for CNN's Emmy-nominated Decades docu-series; The Seventies (2015) (about Vietnam & Terrorism,) The Eighties (2016) (about Wall Street greed and AIDS,) The Nineties (2017) (music and race,) and The 2000s (2018) (about Barack Obama.) She received an ACE Editing Award nomination for her work on the Can We All Get Along? (2017). Lessner was an Additional Editor on Natalie Portman's feature directorial debut , A Tale of Love and Darkness (2015), which premiered at Cannes Film Festival in May 2015. Over the last few years, Inbal did additional editing on Davis Guggenheim's Teach (2013), a 2-hour documentary special for CBS, and on Spent: Looking for Change (2014), his doc about the "unbanked" in America. In 2007, she edited and co-produced the internationally acclaimed I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life & Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal (2007), a Special Selection of the 2007 Berlinale, Vienalle, Jerusalem, and Tribeca Film Festivals. The latter documentary won several awards and is being distributed by the U.S. State Department in 12 languages. Inbal began making films when she was in high school and later produced training films while serving in the Israeli Defense Forces. At NYU, she was the recipient of the prestigious, merit-based, WTC Johnson Fellowship, a full tuition fellowship awarded to one undergraduate filmmaker a year. Since graduating with honors and moving to Los Angeles, Inbal has edited hundreds of hours of non-scripted network & cable television shows, ranging from Sundance Channel's award-winning docu-series Transgeneration and Showtime's American Candidate (2004) directed by R.J. Cutler, to ABC's reality hit show The Bachelorette (2003). She also directed Night Bites: Women and Their Vampires (2003), a docudrama for the Women's Entertainment Network, was second-unit producer on the HBO/ARTE documentary Watermarks (2004) about the women swimmers of the pre-WWII Hakoach Vienna Jewish athletic club, and was an editing consultant on the PBS Emmy-winner Be Good, Smile Pretty (2003). Other credits include editing A Whisper to a Roar (2012) (feature doc about Democracy activists in 5 countries,) If I Die Tonight (2009) (feature doc about police brutality), Shock Act (2004), about a death row experiment (Best Narrative Short winner at Tribeca and Chicago film festivals), and the independent feature The Elephant King (2006) starring Ellen Burstyn. In 2017, while working as a Visiting Professor of Film Editing at UNCSA (University of North Carolina School of The Arts,) Inbal was awarded a grant by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute For The Arts to produce a series of panels concerning work-life balance in the film industry, featuring professionals who are parents. Inbal has also been a Guest Speaker at Wake Forest University and at the University of Pennsylvania.