Jesse Moss
Jesse Moss is a San Francisco-based filmmaker. Most recently, he produced, directed and photographed “The Overnighters,” a feature documentary set in the North Dakota oil fields. The film premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize for Intuitive Filmmaking. The film was theatrically released by Drafthouse Films, and subsequently aired on PBS. The film was shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Feature Documentary, and Moss received a DGA nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary. The Toronto Film Critics Association and Indiewire’s Playlist named “The Overnighters” the top documentary of the year.
His previous films include “Full Battle Rattle,” about the US Army’s Iraq War simulation, which premiered at the 2008 Berlinale, and won the Special Jury Prize at the SXSW Film Festival; “Sp-eedo,” about the life of a Long Island demolition derby champion, which won the Audience Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, among other prizes, and aired on PBS; and “Con Man,” about an Ivy League impostor, for HBO. He also produced “William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe,” which premiered at Sundance in 2008.
He is a lecturer in the Department of Cinema at San Francisco State University, and has served as a creative advisor at the Sundance Documentary Story & Edit Lab. Moss has twice been a fellow of the MacDowell Colony, and writes occasionally about contemporary documentary for Filmmaker Magazine and Indiewire. In 2015, he was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
