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Heather Courtney is a 2014 Guggenheim fellow. She won an Emmy, an Independent Spirit Award, and a SXSW Jury Award for her film WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM, which was broadcast nationally on the PBS series POV. It made several Top 10 films lists, including Salon’s Best Non-fiction, and was supported by many grants and fellowships including from ITVS, the Sundance Documentary Fund, and the United States Artists Fellowship. Heather was also a fellow at the Sundance Edit and Story Lab. She has directed and produced several other documentary films including award-winners LETTERS FROM THE OTHER SIDE, and LOS TRABAJADORES, both broadcast nationally on PBS. They were supported by a Fulbright Fellowship and an International Documentary Association Award.

Most recently she directed and produced, with Anayansi Prado, a Ford- and MacArthur-funded feature documentary about undocumented immigrant students in Georgia, called The Unafraid, which won the Human Rights Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

Prior to receiving her MFA in Film Production, Heather spent eight years writing and photographing for the United Nations and several refugee and immigrant rights organizations, including in the Rwandan refugee camps after the 1994 Rwandan genocide.