Suree Towfighnia

Suree Towfighnia is a filmmaker and educator originally from Chicago, IL.  Her work centers around creative explorations of environmental justice and human rights issues in efforts to balance narratives, inform policy, and support communities historically misrepresented in media. In collaboration with Owe Aku on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Suree directed the award-winning documentaries Crying Earth Rise Up (2015) and Standing Silent Nation (2007) that helped shape policies on industrial hemp and water protection. Since 1999, Suree has mentored next generation filmmakers, including women in the Lakota Media Project, an organization founded in 2003 to support a Lakota perspective in media.  Suree has taught master classes and workshops in documentary ethics, film writing, media strategy, producing, nonfiction filmmaking, editing, and cinematography for organizations, non-profits, and youth, as well as at the Evergreen State College, Columbia College Chicago, Arizona State University (online), and at the EICTV film school in Cuba. Suree produced Haskell Wexler’s Four Days in Chicago, a film that documented the 2012 NATO protests in Chicago. Suree is currently directing a multi-platform project with Oaxacan coffee grower families that involves animation, a long-form documentary, and community education in the United States and Mexico.

Suree received her MFA from Columbia College in Chicago, and her BA in History and Latin American Studies from UC Santa Cruz. Suree recently moved to Denver, Colorado with her partner and their two young children.