Co-Director, Cinematographer - Miracle in the Desert

This feature documentary started as just me and a rabbi I'd never met before in a warehouse in Brooklyn, and it ended watching the President of the United Arab Emirates, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed, weep tears of joy on camera.

A CNN producer I'd worked with often told me about a handwritten Torah being gifted to a powerful Arab leader as a gesture of peace. I co-directed and shot what became a feature documentary — and built it like a thriller from day one, because that's how I shoot and because that's what it was. The format was simple and ancient: will they or won't they? The Torah wasn't just a gift, it was a visual metaphor for whether two "enemies" could find common ground.

The film aired on PBS as "Amen, Amen, Amen." The link below is the six-minute cut I made after that shoot in the UAE — the version that sold it to PBS.