Written and Directed by
Laura Waters Hinson
Producer
Steve Riach
Co-Producer
Aria Swarr
Editor
Kasey Kirby
Director of Photography
Matt Batchelor
Composer
Rachael Philip
Animation
Jennifer Hamblett
LAURA WATERS HINSON
Laura Waters Hinson is an award-winning filmmaker and associate professor of film at American University. Her new feature documentary, Strange Ashes, will make its world premiere at the Austin Film Festival in October 2026. She has directed five feature docs and four short films that have screened at more than 100 film festivals and at the U.S. Congress, United Nations, and Smithsonian National Gallery of Art, with broadcasts on PBS, WORLD, ShortsTV, and Curiosity Stream. Her first film As We Forgive won a Student Academy Award in 2008. Her short documentary The Test (2024) won six major festival awards for Best Documentary and qualified for the Oscars. In 2025, she launched a PBS documentary series, the Community Voice Lab Doc Series, on WETA-PBS. Learn more about her work at www.LauraWatersHinson.com.
Director
STEVE RIACH
An award-winning producer, writer, and director of feature films, documentaries, and television programming, Steve’s projects have been distributed theatrically, as well as through outlets such as Amazon, ESPN, and international outlets across
the world. He is the producer and co-writer of the feature film, ONE HEART, based on an incredible true story of redemption in the juvenile justice world; and the writer/director of the powerful historical documentary series, BLACK & WHITE on the team that changed the racial landscape of college football. He also is a producer of the documentary IX, looking at Title IX and sexual assault on college campuses, ALL OR NOTHING: MICHIGAN FOOTBALL, an Amazon docuseries on the storied football team, as well as an untitled Amazon docuseries on the rise and fall of the American Basketball Association.
Producer