DLI Productions has been creating award-winning feature documentaries and series for over 25 years, gaining recognition internationally as a leader in independent film and television production.
Founders Abbey Neidik and Irene Angelico first teamed up to produce and direct their feature Dark Lullabies, a personal journey film that pioneered the point-of-view genre of documentary storytelling. Exploring the repercussions of the Holocaust on children of Survivors and children of Nazis, this powerful film went on to receive numerous prestigious international awards and was screened and broadcast in over forty countries.
With a talent for telling informative and entertaining stories on compelling subjects, the filmmaking duo has gone on to produce and direct documentaries that have garnered awards and honors worldwide, including Genies, Geminis, Gémeaux, several Best Documentary and Best Documentary Series, Grand Prizes, First Prizes, Jury Awards, a Most Memorable Film award, a Silver Hugo, Gold Apple Gold Plaque, Golden Sheaf, Chris Statuette, Guirlande d’Honneur, Etrog, CIDA Prize, four Peabody nominations, Retrospectives, a theme evening, Film Critic Association awards and several Audience Picks. Their films gain high audience ratings, are broadcast in multiple languages, and are incorporated into university curriculum throughout the world.
DLI Production’s films dive into diverse topics, ranging from the heart-wrenching stories of Romanian orphans after the fall of Ceausescu, the trials of a women’s pro tennis tour, the intimate lives of people struggling with schizophrenia and depression, Katrina survivors rebuilding their homes in rural Louisiana, an honour killing in a Kurdish village in Turkey, a controversial sex-for-salvation cult, Tibetan refugees and the Dalai Lama in exile and the Anglos of Québec. Most recently, DLI has delved into realms the rarefied world of young Hasidic women to the privatization of New Space.
Their series take in-depth looks behind some of the most pervasive elements of our lives, whose meanings are often overlooked. Series like The Cola Conquest explores Coca-Cola as “the sublimated essence of all that America stands for”; Black Coffee examines coffee’s social/political impact on society, from its discovery in ancient Ethiopia to its place in contemporary life; and Inside the Great Magazines, a three-part special on the powerful influence of magazines on nearly every aspect of our lives from our personal identities to our cultural values about race, gender and class.
Currently, DLI is in post-production with Reaching for Zion, a musical journey with Bob Marley’s granddaughter searching for answers about racism and anti-Semitism and First to Stand about the cases and causes of Irwin Cotler and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
By Éric Théoret