Eugene Jarecki

Nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Music Film, The King is a musical road trip in Elvis Presley's 1963 Rolls-Royce that features Alec Baldwin, Chuck D, Emmylou Harris, Mike Myers, Rosanne Cash, Van Jones, and Ethan Hawke, among others, tracing the rise and fall of Elvis as a metaphor for the country he left behind.

Alongside the film, Jarecki created a series of music videos for artists such as Lana Del Rey, M. Ward, The Handsome Family, Immortal Technique, and the Stax Music Academy All-Stars.

Eugene Jarecki (born October 5, 1969) is an American documentary filmmaker.

He is best known as a two-time winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, as well as multiple Emmy and Peabody Awards, for his films Why We Fight, Reagan, and The House I Live In.

His other films include The Trials of Henry Kissinger, Freakonomics, The Opponent, and Quest of the Carib Canoe.

After graduating from the Hackley School in 1987, Eugene attended Princeton University.

There he trained as a stage director, but pivoted into film, where he experienced early success.

His first short film, Season of the Lifterbees, premiered at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival and won the Time Warner Grand Prize at the Aspen Film Festival.

In 2000, Jarecki directed two feature films.

One was the documentary Quest of the Carib Canoe, which documents an effort by indigenous Carib Indians on the Island of Dominica to build an ancient ocean-going canoe and retrace their ancestors' path from South America's Orinoco Delta in what is now modern Guyana to the islands of the Caribbean.

His second film that year was a dramatic feature called The Opponent released by Lionsgate.

In 2002, his first theatrical documentary feature The Trials of Henry Kissinger was released.

Based on the book The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens, this film is the first of Jarecki's sweeping indictments of the perils of power.

Trials was selected to launch both the Sundance Channel's DOCday venture as well as the BBC's digital channel, BBC Four.

Ultimately, the film has been broadcast in over thirty countries.

Winner of the 2002 Amnesty International Award, the film was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and In 2002,

In 2005, Jarecki distinguished himself as a filmmaker unafraid of serious, penetrating investigations.

His film Why We Fight about the role of America's military-industrial complex in leading the nation into the tragic quagmire of the Iraq War, won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and a Peabody Award.

He also received a nomination for Best Documentary Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America for the film.

Alongside directors Alex Gibney, Morgan Spurlock, and Rachel Grady, Jarecki directed a segment of the 2010 feature Freakonomics based on the 2005 book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.

The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival that year.

In 2011, Jarecki returned to the Sundance Film Festival with his Emmy Award-winning film Reagan, before its national television release on HBO on what would have been the 40th President's 100th birthday.

The next year, The House I Live In, his film about America's War on Drugs, won Jarecki a second Grand Jury Prize at Sundance as well as a second Peabody Award.

Achieving a level of mainstream recognition, the film's producers included Danny Glover, John Legend, Brad Pitt, and Russell Simmons.

In order to create a genuine impact, the film was exhibited in over 130 U.S. prisons, churches, and statehouses, as well as on Capitol Hill.

Along with the music video of the same name, featuring John Legend, and the viral short Just Say No...to the War on Drugs, (both directed by Jarecki), the film is credited with changing the national conversation on U.S. drug policy.

In 2014, Jarecki took part in the first Ted Talk in the history of Cuba at Havana's Teatro Nacional.

In 2015, Jarecki served as executive producer on the documentary feature film (T)ERROR, directed by Lyric Cabral and David Felix Sutcliff, which won Jarecki a Sundance Special Jury Prize and his second Emmy Award.

That same year, he also executive produced Laura Israel's feature documentary Don't Blink – Robert Frank about the late legendary photographer's work and career.

His most recent film, The King, produced by Steven Soderbergh, Errol Morris, and Rosanne Cash, premiered at Cannes and Sundance.

Events that occurred in the days leading up to the talk became the subject of Jarecki's 2016 short film, The Cyclist (El Ciclista) which he directed for The New Yorker/Amazon.

In 2018, Jarecki's first public contemporary art exhibit, entitled Promised Land, was featured at Miami Art Basel as part of "This is Not America" at the Faena Hotel, Miami Beach.

A multiscreen video presentation, Promised Land was inspired by Jarecki's 2018 film, The King.

In 2019, it was announced that Jarecki is returning to dramatic filmmaking with a yet-untitled action film about a Saharan, Tuareg nomad, who seeks revenge for a crime committed against his tribal customs.

His most recent feature, The King, was nominated for two Emmys in 2020, including Best Documentary Feature, and a 2019 Grammy Award for Best Music Film of the Year.

Jarecki is also the author of The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril (Simon & Schuster).

Jarecki was born in New Haven, Connecticut to Henry Jarecki and Gloria Jarecki, a former film critic at Time magazine.

Jarecki grew up in New York with his brothers Andrew Jarecki (The Jinx, Capturing the Friedmans) and Thomas A. Jarecki.

They also have a half-brother Nicholas Jarecki (Arbitrage).

All four brothers are in the film industry, most notably Andrew who has also won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and Emmy award for his own films and series.