The Film

Creative Team

Cody Sheehy – Director
Samira Kiani – Producer
Mark Monroe – Writer
Geralyn Dreyfous – Executive Producer
Geoffrey O’Conner – Executive Producer
Galen McCaw – Sound Recordist

Mark Monroe

Writer

Mark Monroe is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose theatrical writing credits include:
“Fed Up” (Sundance 2014); “The Summit”, (Winner, Best Editing Sundance 2013); “Who is Dayani Cristal?”, (Winner, Best Cinematography, Sundance 2013); “Sound City” (Sundance 2013); “The Cove” (Winner, Best Documentary 2010 Academy Awards & Best Documentary Script, W.G.A. 2010); “The Tillman Story”; “Chasing Ice” (Winner, Best Cinematography Sundance 2012); “Stolen Seas”; “Last Play at Shea”; “Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos”, (W.G.A. nomination “Best Documentary Script”, 2007); “Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who”, and writer/director, “Morning Light”, Disney Pictures.
A journalism graduate from the University of Oklahoma, Mark began his career in television as a newswriter for CNN in Atlanta. Before writing for film, he produced more than sixty hours of biography-style programming for TV.

GERALYN DREYFOUS

Executive Producer, Impact Partners

Geralyn Dreyfous has a wide, distinguished background in the arts, extensive experience in consulting in the philanthropic sector, and participates on numerous boards and initiatives. She is the Founder and Board Chair of the Utah Film Center, a non-profit that curates free screenings and outreach programs for communities throughout Utah.
In 2007, she co-founded Impact Partners Film Fund with Dan Cogan, bringing together financiers and filmmakers so that they can create great films that entertain audiences, enrich lives, and ignite social change. Since its inception, IP has been involved in the financing of over 70 films. Geralyn is also a founding member of Gamechanger, the first for-profit film fund dedicated exclusively to financing narrative features directed by women.
Geralyn’s independent executive producing and producing credits include the Academy Award winning Born Into Brothels; Emmy nominated The Day My God Died, Academy Award nominated and Emmy Award winning The Square, Academy Award nominated and Peabody Award winning The Invisible War, and multiple film festival winners. Geralyn has been recognized by Variety and the International Documentary Association for her significant contribution to documentary filmmaking.

GEOFFREY O’CONNOR

Executive Producer, Copious Pictures

Geoffrey O’Connor is an Academy Award nominated producer, writer and director who is best known as being a principle creative force behind the BAFTA Award-winning BBC-2 series “Weird Weekends” with writer/ presenter Louis Theroux. Geoffrey developed the participant-journalist model for “Weird Weekends”, directed the series pilot and was the show’s Senior Producer for several seasons. He was an Emmy Award-winning producer on Michael Moore’s series “TV Nation” and he was nominated for an Academy Award for his independent documentary film “At the Edge of Conquest.” Mr. O’Connor spent a decade independently producing documentaries and news stories about human rights abuses and environmental destruction in the Brazilian Amazon. He chronicled those experiences in his nonfiction memoir “Amazon Journal: Dispatches from a Vanishing Frontier,” which was a NY Times and LA Times “Notable Book of the Year” in 1997. His companion film “Amazon Journal” was nominated for a “Distinguished Documentary Award” by the IDA in 1998. Geoffrey continues to direct for the BBC where he has produced over a dozen programs with Louis Theroux including two films about the Christian hate group The Westboro Baptist Church; those include “Surviving The Most Hated Family” (2019) and “The Most Hated Family in America,” (2007), which is Mr.Theroux’s most widely watched film. Geoffrey is in development on three multi-part nonfiction series through his company Copious Pictures. He is a citizen of the U.S. and Ireland and he lives in New York.

Cody Sheehy

Director

Cody Sheehy, is an Emmy award winning filmmaker responsible for the creative vision and execution of high impact documentary and social media campaigns at Rhumbline Media. Cody has successfully produced documentaries and campaigns all over the world, from the Steppes of Mongolia, the Australian Outback, to the Jungles of Costa Rica. His films are focused on stories about our changing world told from the perspective of people in science and the natural environment and have aired on PBS affiliate stations across the United States, Amazon Prime, the Internet and in film festivals. He is also the co-founder of a technology startup company, Filmstacker, that is the first online collaborative video platform to offer real time dynamic exploration of video stories that are created with machine learning.

Samira Kiani

Producer

Samira Kiani’s career is built around her passion for applying the CRISPR technology to synthetic biology. She has demonstrated multiple transformative innovations with CRISPR, including modulatory circuits that precisely control gene modulation. She has been working in the area of genetic engineering since 2010 in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), when zinc finger nucleases and Tale Nucleases were introduced for genome engineering in human somatic and stem cells. In 2013, she started to work with the CRISPR technology while pursuing her postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Ron Weiss (MIT). During her postdoctoral years, she established collaborative projects with pioneers of the field of CRISPR, including Dr. George Church’s lab (Harvard) to further advance CRISPR technology. As an Assistant Professor in the school of Biological and Health Systems Engineering at Arizona State University, she has established her own independent research program to with an interest to develop safer and controllable CRISPR-based gene therapies. She is the receipt of a number of grants from DARPA and National Institute of Health and has recently been selected as American Association for Advancement of Science Leshner Leadership Fellow for Public engagement of science. She serves in the organizing committee of multiple CRISPR and Synthetic Biology conferences and have published high impact papers in the field of CRISPR and synthetic biology.

Galen McCaw

Sound Recordist, Sound Editor, Consulting Editor

Galen McCaw is a sound recordist, sound editor, videographer, and film editor with a passion for documentary storytelling. Galen has a background in music performance, composition, and production, and was an engineering intern at both WaveLab Recording Studios and The University of Arizona School of Music Recording Studio while studying music at The University of Arizona. During his studies, Galen began applying his craft to film projects, working in production and post-production sound. By the time Galen graduated, he was working professionally on short films, TV shows, commercials, and documentary projects. Galen has had the opportunity to work on commercials for clients like BetterHelp and KFC, and worked as a sound recordist, videographer, and editor on the documentary TV show Arizona Illustrated for Arizona Public Media, where he was awarded a Rocky Mountain Emmy for his sound work on the short documentary Ephemeral. Galen also sound mixed a live broadcast of the 2018 World All Around Shotgun Championships, and has worked as a boom operator on several feature films. He has traveled to China, France, the Dominican Republic, and throughout the United States working on documentaries, and after his experience working on The Human Game, hopes to specialize in documentary sound recording moving forward in his career.

In Our Film

Meet the changemakers who are shaping this revolution.

He Jiankui

Formerly a researcher at SUSTech University in Shenzen China and formerly the CEO of Direct Genomics, Dr. He is the first scientist to edit human embryos, implant them into women, and bring the first gene edited babies into existence. The twin girls, Lulu and Nano, where enhanced to be resistant to possible infection by the HIV virus.

Ben Hurlbut

As a researcher at Arizona State university, Ben focuses on controversy around morally and technically complex problems. His investigations in China and extensive interviews with Dr. He reveals the full extent of what happened and what the stakes are for our collective future.

Antonio Regalado

Senior Editor, MIT Technology Review

In many ways Antonio serves as a lone watchdog on the remarkable technological achievements in genomic engineering and the implications to future society. Our team arranged for Antonio to interview Professor Huang (who edited humans embryos in 2014) and was present when Antonio met Dr. He Jiankui (whose clinical trials have lead to the first gene edited babies). Our film follows Antonio as he breaks the International CRISPR baby story.

Dr. George Church, PhD

Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School

George is shaping the genomic revolution through his influential network in science, business, and political circles. Our team follows George as he tours his various business interests in the U.S. and China. He offers deep insight into what is happening behind the headlines.

Image credit: NYT

Paul Mozur

As a technology reporter for the New York Times, Paul was on the frontlines of breaking the story about the disappearance of Dr. He.

Impact Partners

Hello Tomorrow

MIT Technology Review

American Association for the Advancement of Arts and Sciences

Leshner Leadership Institute for Public Engagement with Science

Neo.Life

Diamond Docs

Copious Pictures

Press Kit Downloads