Rupert Russell is a writer and director, of both live-action and animation. He received a Double-Starred First in the Social and Political Sciences from Jesus College, Cambridge, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in Sociology, where he was National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. His films tackle big ideas with breath-taking visuals, wondrous animation, and original reporting. He always go to the heart of the story, whether it is war zones in Ukraine and Somalia, chaos in Iraq and Venezuela, or protests in the U.S., India, Hong Kong and Tunisia.

His feature debut, Freedom for the Wolf, charted the rise of illiberal democracy across the world. The film opened the International Festival and Forum on Human Rights in Geneva, won the Audience Award at the Slamdance Film Festival, and was nominated for the Cinema for Peace ‘Most Valuable Film of the Year’ Award during Berlinale 2019.

His animated series How the World Went Mad used a mixture of satire and science to explore the rising tide of political insanity in America. Commissioned by Nick Fraser’s streaming platform Docsville, the series premiered at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2018, and earned him a spot on the shortlist for the Young Director Award at Cannes Lions 2019.

His current project, Price Wars, is both a feature documentary film to air on Arte and a book to be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (Hachette).He is in pre-production on two Netflix documentaries and two new commercials for HSBC will be airing soon.