Liz Garbus: the director behind Netflix’s Harry & Meghan documentary

The first three episodes of Netflix documentary Harry Meghan may only have aired last week, but it has already created waves on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.

While the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are no strangers to the media spotlight, the release of the highly anticipated series has brought global attention to the woman behind it: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus.

Initially hesitant to take on the task of documenting the couple’s break from the royal family, the project is in fact “something of a culmination of the issues Garbus has chronicled for the past two decades”, said The New York Times.

What is her background?

Born in New York in 1970, Garbus’s father Martin was a prominent civil rights attorney hailed by The Guardian in 1992 as “one of the world’s finest trial lawyers”. His clients included Nelson Mandela, actors Al Pacino, Marilyn Monroe, Robert Redford and Sean Connery, First Lady Nancy Reagan and Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Her mother Ruth was a writer, therapist and social worker.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in history and semiotics from Brown University, Garbus interned at Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax production company. It was there she met fellow documentary maker Jonathan Stack, with whom she made her directorial debut in 1998 with a documentary called The Farm: Angola, USA, which focused on America’s most notorious and largest maximum-security prison, Louisiana State Penitentiary.

The film won Garbus the first of her two Oscar nominations, followed in 2016 for What Happened, Miss Simone?, about the life of troubled jazz singer Nina Simone.

Over her 25-year career Garbus has become known for her “critically acclaimed exposés and documenting the stories of survivors”, said Hello magazine. She has also been hailed for her handling of “complicated stories, ranging from systemic injustices to the lives of troubled public figures”, CNN added.

Whether it’s “social justice seen through the lens of the prison system” – The Farm: Angola, USA and Girlhood – or “uncovering the troubled personal stories” of famous yet enigmatic figures – Bobby Fischer, Marilyn Monroe and Nina Simone – mental health and righting systemic wrongs are “topics she returns to time and again”, said The New York Times.

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/society/958901/liz-garbus-woman-behind-netflix-harry-meghan-documentary