Teddy Leifer

Teddy Leifer is a British film and television producer.^[1] He founded Rise Films in 2006, a London-based production company,^[2] and was nominated for an Academy Award in 2023.^[3]

He has produced a number of films and television programmes, including The Invisible War, Icarus, the Peabody Award-winning documentary All That Breathes,^[4] The Interrupters, Dreamcatcher, We Are Together, Rough Aunties, Mayor, The Art of Political Murder, George Carlin's American Dream and Plebs.

He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,^[5] BAFTA and the Producers Guild of America.

Leifer’s career began in 2006 with We Are Together, a documentary about the orphanage, Agape, in South Africa, which won the Special Jury Prize and Audience Award at Tribeca Film Festival.^[6]

He then produced Rough Aunties, his first collaboration with director Kim Longinotto, which won the Grand Jury Prize in the 'World Cinema — Documentary' category at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.^[7] In 2013, as part of a publicly-voted list produced by the Hospital Club, The Guardian Culture Professionals Network listed Leifer in the "100 most innovative and influential people in British creative and media industries".^[8] At the 84th awards ceremony, All That Breathes won a Peabody Award for "its graceful portrait of empathy and interconnectivity between nature and man."^[9]

He later produced Longinotto’s Dreamcatcher in 2015, which went on to win Sundance’s World Cinema Directing Award.^[10]

Leifer was the executive producer of Academy Award-winning documentary Icarus in 2017,^[11] and Mayor in 2020, which won an Emmy.^[12] He also produced Dror Moreh’s The Human Factor, about the United States’ 30-year effort to bring peace to the Middle East.

In 2022, he produced All That Breathes, directed by Shaunak Sen - the first film to have won both the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and Best Documentary at the Cannes Film Festival.^[13] The film subsequently received BAFTA^[14] and Oscar nominations for Best Documentary^[15]

Other productions include George Carlin’s American Dream, a two-part documentary directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio which won the 2022 Emmy for Outstanding Documentary^[16] and Once Upon A Time In Londongrad,^[17] a political thriller about 14 mysterious UK deaths with alleged Russian links.

Leifer also produced Roman sitcom Plebs, which was the most-watched show in ITV2’s history.^[18] The series ended after five seasons with a feature-length special^[19] released in 2022.

• All That Breathes (2022) (producer)
• George Carlin's American Dream (2022) (executive producer)
• Once Upon a Time In Londongrad (2022) (executive producer)
• The Art of Political Murder (2020) (producer)
• Mayor (2020) (executive producer)
• Plebs (TV Series) (2018) (producer)
• Icarus (2017) (executive producer)^[20]
• The Love Commandos (2016) (TV) (executive producer)
• Chancers (2016) (executive producer)
• Dreamcatcher (2015) (producer)
• Who is Dayani Cristal? (2013) (executive producer)
• The Invisible War (2012) (executive producer)
• Too Fast to be a Woman?: The Story of Caster Semenya (2011) (TV) (executive producer)
• The Interrupters (2011) (executive producer)
• Knuckle (2011) (producer)
• The Honeymoon Suite (2010) (short) (producer)
• Road To Las Vegas (2010) (TV) (producer)
• Cowboys in India (2009) (producer)
• Brave Young Men (2009) (TV) (producer)
• Muslim School (2009) (TV) (executive producer)
• Rough Aunties (2008) (producer)
• Project Kashmir (2008) (associate producer)
• We Are Together (Thina Simunye) (2006) (producer)
• The 10th Man (2006) (short) (producer)
• The Unsteady Chough (2004) (producer)

• Official website
• Teddy Leifer at IMDb