ABOUT JENNIFER UTZ

Jennifer Utz has been covering the Iraqi refugee crisis since the fall of 2006. She was one of the first journalists to highlight the extent of displaced Iraqis as a result of the war in Iraq. She spent a collective eight months in the Middle East with Iraqi refugees, and her first report aired on Democracy Now in February 2007. Subsequent reports aired on ABC World News Tonight, France 24, and Current TV.

In 2008, she launched Iraqi Refugee Stories, which was well-received by numerous publications and organizations, among them Mother Jones, The Utne Reader, and UNCHR.

Jennifer does ongoing videography, production, and editing work for BBC America, CBS News, and is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post.

Her experience with Iraqi refugees inspired her to direct a documentary film, From Baghdad to Brooklyn, which follows the life of a gay Iraqi refugee and his struggle to escape exile in Syria and gain asylum in the U.S. Currently in production, the film is fiscally sponsored by Women Make Movies and has received press from Grit TV, Alternet, and New York Press.

Jennifer was previously a producer at Democracy Now, an independent radio and television news broadcast show hosted by award-winning journalist Amy Goodman.

She was the Supervising Producer and videographer on the feature documentary, American Radical, which explores the controversial career of the Jewish-American academic Norman Finkelstein.

Over the years, Jennifer has worked on a rich assortment of film projects. She spent a year in India teaching members of a women's empowerment organization to produce outreach videos designed to educate a non-literate audience of Untouchable, tribal, and Muslim populations.

Prior to that, Jennifer co-edited a documentary about youth in Zimbabwe, comprised of footage smuggled from the country. She also produced and edited a feature documentary about the academic program “Semester at Sea,” which documented the townships of South Africa, life in Castro’s Cuba, and the Movement for Landless People in Brazil.

Between overseas assignments, Jennifer works as a freelance graphic designer and motion graphics artist.

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