SABRINA SCHMIDT GORDON
Producer | Director | Editor

VESPERTINE FILMS was founded by Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and impact strategist from NYC. Her films employ provocative, nuanced storytelling to center marginalized voices, illuminate diverse experiences, and inspire around the issues that affect our global society. Since her Emmy-winning editing debut for WGBH, she has distinguished herself as a producer, editor, and director. She is a Women at Sundance Fellow, recipient of the Dear Producer Award recognizing excellence in independent filmmaking, and is an inducted member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Sabrina’s latest film, Victim/Suspect, is a Netflix investigative documentary about police handling of sexual assault cases, that premiered in January at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Produced with the Center for Investigative Reporting, it was in the US competition for Best Documentary.  Last year, Sabrina was also at Sundance with To the End, which follows four young women of color, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on the front lines of the fight  to end the climate crisis. She is also the producer of QUEST, an intimate portrait of a North Philadelphia family, from the 2008 election of Barack Obama through to the 2016 nomination of Donald Trump. It also premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, in 2017, receiving critical acclaim and awards on the festival circuit and beyond. It is a New York Times Critics Pick, a Rolling Stone Top 10, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, a Peabody Award, and two Emmys. In an interview with VOGUE magazine, Sabrina discusses authorship, collaboration, and authentic storytelling in Quest, a Documentary Disrupts American Narratives About Race.

Sabrina’s directing debut was the Emmy-nominated BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez, which she co-directed, co-produced, and edited, winning the Best Film Directed by a Woman of Color award at the African Diaspora International Film Festival in 2016. She is also the co-producer and editor of Documented, the story of Pulitzer Prize-winning undocumented journalist, Jose Antonio Vargas. The film had record viewership on CNN, and was nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Best Documentary Film.

Sabrina produced and edited Mrs. Goundo’s Daughter, the gripping story of an undocumented young mother’s fight for asylum to protect her baby daughter from ritual genital cutting. It toured with the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, and was screened at a congressional hearing on women and asylum in partnership with the Tahirih Justice Center. Other credits include her first feature Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, which she produced and edited, and debuted at Sundance; Cooked; The New Black; and Wilhemina’s War. Sabrina’s television credits include America by the Numbers, the acclaimed PBS series hosted by Maria Hinojosa. Her episode, The New Mad Men which she edited, won the Imagen Award for Best National Informational Program.

Sabrina produces, directs and edits content for many video journalism platforms and organizations. Among these are The New York Times, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Frontline, American Masters, The Ford Foundation, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Witness, Agricultural Missions, the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights, and more. She also produces and consults on engagement and impact campaigns for documentary films and other media projects. Sabrina has a Masters in Journalism and serves on many media panels and juries. She is Chair of the Black Documentary Collective and a founding member of Beyond Inclusion, advancing equity in the documentary film industry. Sabrina is an honors graduate from New York University.