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