The Team
The People of Little Monster Films
Chai Vasarhelyi
Producer I Director
Chai Vasarhelyi is an Academy® Award-winning filmmaker. Together with Jimmy Chin, she directed and produced “Free Solo,” an intimate, unflinching portrait of rock climber Alex Honnold, which was awarded a BAFTA and the Academy® Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2019. The film also received seven Emmy® awards.
More recently, Vasarhelyi and Chin directed the BAFTA and DGA-nominated documentary “The Rescue,” chronicling the enthralling, against-all-odds story that transfixed the world in 2018: the daring rescue of twelve boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in Northern Thailand. Other projects include “Return to Space,” about SpaceX and NASA’s first joint spaceflight, which hit the top 10 on Netflix’s most watched films list, and the upcoming series “Edge of the Unknown With Jimmy Chin” which will premiere on the National Geographic Channel in 2022. Her first film with Chin, “Meru,” won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015 and was on the 2016 Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary Feature.
Vasarhelyi’s other films as a director include “Incorruptible” (Truer Than Fiction Independent Spirit Award 2016); “Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love” (Oscilloscope, 2009), which premiered at the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals; “A Normal Life” (Tribeca Film Festival, Best Documentary 2003); and “Touba” (SXSW, Special Jury Prize Best Cinematography in 2013). Vasarhelyi has directed two New York Times Op Docs, two episodes for Netflix’s nonfiction design series “Abstract” and two episodes for ESPN’s nonfiction series “Enhanced.” She has received grants from the Sundance Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Bertha Britdoc, and the National Endowment of the Arts. She is a member of the DGA, the AMPAS, and holds a B.A. in comparative literature from Princeton University.
Vasarhelyi splits her time between New York City and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with Chin, their daughter, Marina, and son, James.
Jimmy Chin
Producer I Director
Jimmy Chin is an Academy® Award-winning filmmaker, National Geographic photographer and professional climber and skier. He has led and documented cutting edge expeditions around the world for over 20 years. He has climbed and skied Mount Everest from the summit and made the coveted first ascent of the Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru. His photographs have graced the covers of National Geographic Magazine and the New York Times Magazine.
Together with Chai Vasarhelyi, he directed and produced the Oscar and Emmy winning “Free Solo,” the BAFTA nominated “The Rescue,” and the 2015 Sundance Audience Award winner “Meru.” Recent projects include “Return to Space,” about SpaceX and NASA’s first joint spaceflight, which hit the top 10 on Netflix’s most watched films list, and the upcoming series “Edge of the Unknown With Jimmy Chin” which will premiere on the National Geographic Channel in 2022.
Jimmy splits his time between New York City and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with Chai, their daughter, Marina, and son, James.
Anna Barnes
President
Anna runs all aspects of Little Monster Films, developing content and overseeing the production of films and series from inception to release. Prior to LMF, she worked on many of the top nonfiction films of the past decade, including a long roster of Oscar® winners and nominees such as Ezra Edelman’s OJ: MADE IN AMERICA, Matthew Heineman’s CARTEL LAND, Bryan Fogel’s ICARUS, Yance Ford’s STRONG ISLAND, RaMell Ross’ HALE COUNTY: THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING and Gianfranco Rosi’s FIRE AT SEA. As an executive at Cinetic Media, she oversaw the distribution campaigns for many successful documentaries such as the Oscar®-nominated Banksy documentary EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP and Asif Kapadia’s SENNA. Having first worked with Chin and Vasarhelyi on their 2015 hit MERU, she re-teamed with them and National Geographic on the record-breaking theatrical release for the Oscar®-winning FREE SOLO. Anna started her career in Boston working with legendary filmmaker and Oscar®-winner Frederick Wiseman.
Aideen Kane
Vice President of Production
Aideen is responsible for developing and vetting production for features and series in development and pre-production and overseeing production on current projects. Before joining Little Monster Films, she was VP of Production for Fork Films where she shepherded all content from development through distribution. Aideen recently produced The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales (dir. Abigail Disney & Kathleen Hughes). She co-produced Women in Blue with Beth Levison and produced and co-directed The 8th, the story of how Ireland overturned one of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws. Previous credits include award winning documentaries and series including The Armor of Light (dir. Abigail Disney & Kathleen Hughes), the landmark PBS Women War and Peace Series II, The Trials of Spring (dir. Gini Reticker), and The Awful Truth series for Channel 4 (dir. Michael Moore), among others.
Christina Hunt
Post Production Executive
In her role as Post Production Executive at Little Monster Films, Christina strategizes and oversees post workflows on all projects, starting in development and continuing through final delivery. Christina has worked in film post production since 2000. She started as an Assistant Editor for Errol Morris’s First Person Series and PBS’s NOVA. She has primarily worked with Frederick Wiseman for the past 15 years. While her main role was to assist Mr. Wiseman in editing his films, she also performed the sound edit and worked on location as DIT and occasionally assistant camera and sound. She most recently edited with Wiseman the documentary, ‘City Hall’ in 2020 and a fiction piece, ‘Un Couple’ in 2021. Christina was also the Manager of Film Post Production at Emerson College from 2008-2018, during which time she co-designed and integrated new post production facilities, mentored students through their filmmaking process and worked with a number of Boston filmmakers, editing and mixing various documentary and narrative projects. Christina’s love of filmmaking started with shooting 16mm film which she continues to do on a regular basis.
Amanda Morrison
Director of Development
Amanda oversees the development of documentary and scripted features and series for Little Monster Films. Previously, she worked as an Associate Producer at Ark Media on a Netflix limited series about a despotic fundamentalist Mormon group. Amanda also writes and produces content on China-related issues, which has been featured in Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, SupChina, and by a variety of research institutes. Amanda holds a B.A. from Princeton University and M.S. from Tsinghua University in Beijing. She is originally from Helena, Montana and loves to run, bike, ski, and climb.
Zoe Sua Cho
Production Manager
In her work managing shoots and production for LMF, Zoe draws on over a decade of experience in production. She produced the award winning South Korean feature HOUSE OF HUMMINGBIRD, and THEY, an official selection at Cannes Film Festival. She has worked on numerous productions including Jane Campion's THE POWER OF THE DOG, and upcoming feature documentary BETWEEN GOODBYES from Jigsaw Productions. Zoe is a fellow of the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program and a BAFTA Los Angeles Newcomer.
Bob Eisenhardt
Editor
Bob is a filmmaker renowned for editing documentaries and a frequent LMF collaborator. He is an Oscar nominee, a four-time Emmy winner, and a two-time winner of the Eddie award from the honorary society of American Cinema Editors. He has over sixty films to his credit. His film, SPACES: THE ARCHITECTURE OF PAUL RUDOLPH, was an Academy Award nominee for Best Short Documentary. Bob edited FREE SOLO, the 2019 Oscar and BAFTA award winner, for which he received the ACE Eddie for Best Editing - Documentary. Other recent films include: SCOTTY AND THE SECRET HISTORY OF HOLLYWOOD; RESTLESS CREATURE: WENDY WHELAN, shown at the 2016 New York Film Festival; and HBO’s EVERYTHING IS COPY: NORA EPHRON, SCRIPTED AND UNSCRIPTED, shown at the 2015 New York Film Festival, a Primetime Emmy nominee, and winner of ACE Eddie for Best Editing – TV Documentary. Other films include WAGNER'S DREAM, which received an Emmy nomination for editing; MERU, Sundance Film Festival audience award winner; VALENTINO: THE LAST EMPEROR; DIXIE CHICKS: SHUT UP & SING; LIVING EMERGENCY: STORIES OF DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS; and CONCRT OF WILLS: MAKING OF THE GETTY CENTER. When not in the edit room, Bob teaches at the School of Visual Arts MFA Program and the thesis master class at the New York Film Academy.
Simona Ferrari
Junior Editor
Simona was born and raised in Italy, where she started her career working as a director and lead editor on countless TV shows aired on the most prominent networks in Europe such as Rai and Mediaset. She traveled the world, directing, shooting and editing documentaries and television episodes for various Italian TV shows. Since her move to New York City in 2015, Simona has worked for several documentaries and films for HBO, National Geographic, Hallmark, and others. She started working at Little Monster Films in 2016 and was associate editor on the 2019 Oscar-winning documentary film, FREE SOLO. Her editing work with LMF includes the Op-Doc WHAT IF HE FALLS? for The New York Times, the web series PAS DE DEUX for the American Ballet Theatre, BRIE LARSON CLIMBS THE GRAND TETON, and several short films for independent directors.
Pagan Harleman
Showrunner
Pagan Harleman is an award-winning showrunner and producer with a impressive background and a gift for shaping innovative and entertaining stories. After attending NYU Grad film she worked with directors Spike Lee, Ang Lee and Alan Rudolph in post-production before transitioning to documentary. For the last decade she has focused on developing original docu-series for network and streaming including ABC, Showtime, Pivot, CNN, TNT, BET, Discovery, Nat Geo, and HBO. She has collaborated with a wide range of celebrated Oscar and Emmy-Award winning filmmakers including Murray Lerner, Robert Redford, Sam Pollard, Terence Wrong, Marc Levin and Matthew Heineman. Her projects include SOME KIND OF BLUE; CHICAGOLAND; the Emmy Award-winning THE STORM; and the Peabody Award-winning HOPKINS. Most recently she developed and Executive Produced the IDA Award-winning docu-series THE TRADE, which premiered at Sundance and screened on Showtime, and Executive Produced Matthew Heineman's upcoming documentary feature THE FIRST WAVE, which will be released by Participant and Nat Geo. She is currently producing two new projects with LMF for Nat Geo.
Suzanne Giordano
Line Producer
Suzanne is a Brooklyn-based Line Producer who has been working in production management for over a decade. She has a wide range of experience, from commercials to reality, and most prominently, documentaries. As a Line Producer, Suzanne has overseen production on a number of projects, most recently MURDER IN THE BAYOU for Showtime, and EMPIRES OF NEW YORK for CNBC. She is currently working on two new series projects for LMF.
Clair Popkin
Cinematographer
Clair is a cinematographer working mainly in the commercial, documentary and film fields, and a frequent collaborator of LMF. Clair first worked with Chai Vasarhelyi on her episode of the Netflix series ABSTRACT: THE ART OF DESIGN and has been working with Little Monster Films ever since; Clair was a Co-DP on FREE SOLO, for which he earned a Primetime Emmy. Clair shoots documentary films and commercials all over the world for a diverse set of clients including, Netflix, HBO, Apple, Hulu And National Geographic.