Sahar Driver

Co-Executive Director

Color Congress

Sahar Driver is a founding Co-Executive Director of Color Congress alongside Sonya Childress. She is a veteran documentary impact strategist, field builder, and researcher. Her career has focused on social and cultural transformation through nonfiction storytelling. She has led impact campaigns and strategy for over two-dozen documentaries, independently and with Active Voice. She has designed and led impact trainings and grantmaking programs to support impact producers and filmmakers of color with Firelight Media. She worked with Doc Society to update the second edition of their Impact Field Guide and wrote the 2019 Impact Hi5 case studies. Today she is on the Doc Society Inc US Board of Directors, the Picture Motion Advisory Board, and was a 2022 Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow and a 2021 Rockwood / JustFilms Fellow. In 2020 she authored the Ford Foundation commissioned report: Beyond Inclusion: The Critical Role of People of Color in the U.S. Documentary Ecosystem.

Participating Sessions

One Year In: Forging New Alliances in Funding and Distribution

As PBS redraws its role for nonfiction films and as major streaming platforms and traditional broadcasters narrow their slates for investigative documentaries, independent filmmakers face both daunting challenges and rare opportunities in getting their work to audiences. Navigating this unsettled territory—where public infrastructure is receding and corporate algorithms reign—has become a defining issue along today’s “New Fault Lines.” This session brings together leading voices from long-standing and emerging alternatives for...