Heather Courtney is an Emmy-winning filmmaker, and a Guggenheim, Sundance, and Fulbright fellow. Her film WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM, which was broadcast nationally on the PBS series POV, won an Emmy, an Independent Spirit Award, and a SXSW Jury Award. It was supported by many grants and fellowships, including from the Sundance Documentary Fund, United States Artists, and ITVS. Her other documentary films include award-winners and PBS-broadcasted LETTERS FROM THE OTHER SIDE, and LOS TRABAJADORES, which won an International Documentary Association Award.
She was commissioned by PBS and The Center for New American Media to direct a short documentary on the urban/rural divide as part of the Postcards from the Great Divide series, which streamed summer 2016 on PBS and the Washington Post online.
Most recently she co-directed and produced a Ford-funded feature documentary about undocumented immigrant students, called THE UNAFRAID. It won the Human Rights Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and was broadcast on the national PBS series America ReFramed/World Channel.
Prior to receiving her MFA in Film, Heather spent eight years writing and photographing for the United Nations and several refugee rights organizations, including in the Rwandan refugee camps after the 1994 Rwandan genocide.