Team
IVY MEEROPOL is the Director and Producer of ASK E. JEAN, a feature documentary film about the advice columnist and journalist E Jean Carroll who sued Donald Trump for rape and defamation and won. In 2023, she completed AFTER THE BITE (HBO), a feature documentary about the explosion of great white sharks and seals on Cape Cod. She premiered her HBO documentary ROY COHN: BULLY, COWARD, VICTIM at the 2019 New York Film Festival and in 2020 the film was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Historical Documentary. She was the Senior Story Producer on the CNNFilms documentary THE END: INSIDE THE LAST DAYS OF THE OBAMA WHITE HOUSE, which premiered at the National Archives in Washington, DC. She directed and produced the feature INDIAN POINT, about an aging nuclear power plant close to New York City, which was honored with the Frontline Award for Journalism in a Documentary Film and aired on NHK during the anniversary of Fukushima in Japan. Ivy created and directed the 6-part nonfiction series THE HILL (Sundance Channel), about Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) and his young staff (nominated for best series by the International Documentary Association). She produced the feature documentary MUSEUM TOWN, which premiered at SXSW, and has produced and directed for the Emmy Award winning climate change series YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY (National Geographic) and for DEATH ROW STORIES (CNN). Ivyâs debut film, HEIR TO AN EXECUTION (HBO), explored the legacy of her grandparents Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. It premiered at Sundance and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences and serves on the Professional Advisory Board of The Jacob Burns Film Center.
Laura Bickford – Producer
Laura Bickford is the Oscar nominated producer of films such as Traffic (2001), which won four Academy Awards, Che Part 1 & Part 2 (2008), which won best actor at Cannes, Arbitrage (2012), Duplicity (2009), Fur (2006), and the Emmy Award winning HBO film Citizen X (1996). She executive produced Beasts of No Nation (2015) and Sweetness in the Belly (2020). Laura is a long standing member of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Producers Guild. She was a board member of the former PEN Center USA and currently chairs PEN Americaâs adapted screenplay and authorâs dinner series.
Annabelle Dunne – Producer
Annabelle Dunne is a multiple Emmy-nominated documentary and scripted film producer. Her film subjects cover an array of biographical and social issues. She has produced William Friedkinâs final film, The Caine Mutiny, for Paramount; Everything Is Copy, a documentary about Nora Ephron; Agnelli, about the life of Gianni Agnelli; Swiped: Hooking Up in the Digital Age; Fake Famous; and aka Mr. Chow, all for HBO. In 2018 Annabelle and her cousin, Griffin Dunne, did a personal project for Netflix about their aunt titled, Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold.
Martina Radwan – Cinematographer
Martina Radwan, a German-Syrian, is an accomplished cinematographer. After moving to New York City in the mid 90âs, she DPâed several fiction films before she developed a deep interest in documentaries. In 2024, she received an Emmy for Outstanding Cinematography for a Nonfiction Program for her DP work on GIRLS STATE. Her recent work includes THE ONLY GIRL IN THE ORCHESTRA, the 2025 Academy Award Winner for Short Documentary, FOLLOWING HARRY, ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE?, FOOD AND COUNTRY, THE FIRE THAT TOOK HER, the 2023 Emmy Winner for Outstanding Crime and Justice Documentary, INVENTING TOMORROW, winner of the 2020 Peabody Award, and THE FINAL YEAR. SAVING FACE, the 2012 Academy Award Winner for Short Documentary and Emmy winner, earned her an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Cinematography in 2013. Continuing to push her own boundaries, Radwan directed two award winning shorts that played on national and international festivals, before she directed, produced TOMORROW, TOMORROW, TOMORROW, her first feature-length documentary as director. Martina is a member of the Academy and Bafta Documentary Branch, as well as the Television Academy’s Documentary Programming.
Ferne Pearlstein – Editor, Writer and Story Producer
Ferne Pearlstein is an award-winning producer, director, cinematographer, and editor. Winner of the Sundance Cinematography Prize for Ramona Diazâs IMELDA and a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, she has made films everywhere from Japan to Haiti to Guyana to Burma, where she snuck her 16mm camera into the rebel bases of the Karen Liberation Army. Ferne has had four features premiere at Tribeca, including the critically acclaimed THE LAST LAUGH starring Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman, and Auschwitz survivor Renee Firestone, which aired on Independent Lens and streamed on Netflix and Amazon. In 2019 Ferne was one of only eight filmmakers chosen by the UN and Google to direct a series of 17 PSAs about building a sustainable planet, starring Bridget Everett, Amber Tamblyn, David Cross, and others, which screened at the UN General Assembly. Most recently Ferne produced, directed, and edited XCLD, a nuanced look at cancel culture, for Trevor Noah and MSNBC. Currently, she is producing JACK WHITTEN: A COSMIC SOUL, directed by Yoruba Richen, and is editor, writer and story producer on Ivy Meeropolâs documentary ASK E. JEAN, about E. Jean Carroll, which premiered at the 2025 Telluride Film Festival.
Leah Goudsmit – Editor
Leah Goudsmit is a documentary editor known for blending social themes with a commercial visual style. In recent years, her work has included Infinite Canvas (2020), a feature on augmented reality artists produced by Apple; The Price of Freedom (2021), a documentary on the NRA that premiered at Tribeca and aired on CNN and MAX; and LUCHA: A Wrestling Tale (2023), which won the Metropolis competition at DOC NYC. In 2024, she edited XCLD: The Story of Cancel Culture, directed by Ferne Pearlstein and produced by Trevor Noah, which aired on MSNBC. After Ask E. Jean, she started working on a Peacock docuseries about Black cowboys.
E. Jean Carroll – Film Subject
E. Jean Carroll is a journalist and the author of six books, including The New York Times instant best seller, Not My Type: One Woman Vs. A President. She was named one of Time‘s Most Influential People in the World in 2024. She is the only person in the world to have beaten Donald Trump twice.
Robbie Kaplan – Film Subject
Roberta A. (âRobbieâ) Kaplan is a renowned trial lawyer with decades of experience in civil litigation. Stephen Gillers has described Robbie as the kind of âlawyer that you donât want to see opposing you.â She has also been described as âa brash and original strategist, with neither a gift for patience nor silence, a crusader for underdogs who has won almost every legal accolade imaginable.â
Robbie is known both for her intellectual creativity and her dogged determination. The head of litigation at Sullivan & Cromwell is quoted in a profile of Robbie explaining that Robbie âsees things from a thousand different angles all at once . . . she knows her law cold, she knows the Constitution cold and sheâs not afraid, if she sees a problem, to go to figure out some law thatâs going to allow her to fix it.âÂ
Robbie has consistently been ranked by Chambers and others as one of the top litigators in the country. Chambers (which ranks Robbie as Band 1 in three separate categories: commercial, employment litigation, and higher education) has called Robbie âa modern-day legal giant. A towering intellect and a genius in court, with the instincts of a street fighter.â In 2025, anonymous reporters on Chambers described Robbie as a âforce of natureâ who is very good at submitting âdrop-the-micâ briefs for her clients.Â
On behalf of her client, E. Jean Carroll, Robbie has the distinction of being the only lawyer to have taken the deposition of President Donald J. Trump twice, and to have obtained two separate unanimous jury verdicts against him of $5 and $83.3 million respectively, with both juries reaching a verdict in less than three hours.Â
Among numerous honors, Robbie has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Law Journal, and has been chosen as âLitigator of the Yearâ by The American Lawyer, âLawyer of the Yearâ by Above the Law, and âMost Innovative Lawyer of the Yearâ by The Financial Times.Â
Robbie is the author of Then Comes Marriage: United States v. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA (W.W. Norton), chosen by the L.A. Times as one of the top ten books of 2015 and praised by President Bill Clinton as âa riveting account of a watershed moment in our history, and the strategy, ingenuity, and humanity that made it happen.â
Lisa Birnbach – Film Subject
Best known for The Official Preppy Handbook, the 1980 New York Times bestseller, Lisa Birnbach is a social observer, a witty cultural commentator, and the friend E. Jean Carroll called after she was assaulted at Bergdorf Goodman in 1996.
Ms. Birnbach has written for many magazines and newspapers over the course of her career, including, New York Magazine, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Elle, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many others. She appeared on major tv shows and minor ones, and has enjoyed lecturing in almost all 50 states and in some of Europeâs most stylish cities.
She was a contributor on CBS News (when it was still CBS News) on âThe Early Showâ and won two Gracie Awards for her syndicated radio show, âThe Lisa Birnbach Showâ. For two years, she was also named the âbest-dressed woman in radioâ, by herself. Her long-running podcast, âFive Things that Make Life Betterâ is still available online though no longer in production.
All told, she has written or co-written more than twenty books. True Prep was published in 2010 by Alfred A. Knopf.
She raised three children on the Upper East Side of New York, who, despite that questionable provenance, have all exceeded her dreams as great people with beautiful hearts and discerning Taste.
Impact Partners
Impact Partners is dedicated to funding independent documentary storytelling that entertains audiences, engages with pressing social issues, and propels the art of cinema forward. Over the span of 15 years, Impact Partners has been involved in the financing of over 150 films, including: ICARUS, which won the 2018 Academy Award Âź for Best Documentary Feature; SUGARCANE, which was nominated for the 2025 Academy Award Âź for Best Documentary Feature; 32 SOUNDS, which won 2024 Cinema Eye Honors for Outstanding Nonfiction Feature; AFTERSHOCK, which won a 2023 Peabody Award, WONâT YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?, which won the 2019 Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary; OF FATHERS AND SONS, which was nominated for the 2019 Academy Award Âź for Best Documentary Feature; DINA, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and was named Best Feature by the International Documentary Association; THE EAGLE HUNTRESS, which was nominated for the 2017 BAFTA Award for Best Documentary; HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE, which was nominated for the 2013 Academy Award Âź for Best Documentary Feature; and HELL AND BACK AGAIN, which won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize Award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award Âź for Best Documentary Feature.