--- name: "Jehane Noujaim" canonical: "https://film.one/person/jehane-noujaim" fi1m_id: "jehane-noujaim" imdb_id: "nm0636675" tmdb_id: 115892 wikidata_id: "Q2264148" roles: ["Producer","Director"] born: "17 May 1974" reviewed_on_fi1m: 2 average_as: "producer" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-10-03T01:02:22.649211+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Jehane Noujaim ## Identity Jehane Noujaim - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/jehane-noujaim - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** jehane-noujaim - **IMDb ID:** nm0636675 - **TMDB ID:** 115892 - **Wikidata ID:** Q2264148 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehane_Noujaim, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2264148, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0636675/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/115892 Producer and director. Born 17 May 1974 in Washington, D.C., USA. ## Details - **Work:** Producer, Director - **Born:** 17 May 1974, Washington, D.C., USA - **Active:** 2017–2019 - **Titles on Fi1m:** 2: 1 directing, 1 producing - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehane_Noujaim, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2264148, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0636675/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/115892 ## Streaming the US now - **Netflix:** [*The Great Hack*](https://film.one/film/the-great-hack.md) (65) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Jehane Noujaim > Jehane Noujaim makes large, complicated events legible by following a few people closely. We value her patience and access, but *The Great Hack* makes stronger claims than its evidence supports. Noujaim stays close to a few people while larger events unfold around them. Her handheld, ground-level filming puts us among them, and following them over time lets us watch their responses change. We value the patience involved in getting to know someone beyond an interview. The difficulty is knowing how much of the wider story those encounters can explain. *Startup.com* (2001), made in collaboration with D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, established that observational approach by following a dot-com company. *Control Room* (2004) examined competing accounts of the same events. By *The Square* (2013), a small group of participants provides the route through a much larger story. Noujaim's access matters here: sustained proximity lets her build a film around people changing over time, though keeping so close to them can leave the wider circumstances underexplained. With Karim Amer, she takes that interest in information into *The Great Hack* (2019), which examines the harvesting of personal data. The film is useful because it makes the collection of that information seem consequential rather than merely technical. We were unsettled by its account of lost privacy, which made the apparently harmless scraps we leave behind feel worth protecting. The documentary does not rely heavily on narration or talking heads to guide us, an approach that keeps a complicated subject within reach. The difficulty comes when *The Great Hack* moves from showing that information is collected to claiming what it can make people do. Its confidence about the power of that information exceeds the evidence it supplies, and we are left without a proper measure of how much influence was achieved. That is a substantial weakness in a film asking us to reconsider something so ordinary. We recommend it as an introduction to data harvesting, with that limit kept firmly in mind. ## Biography Jehane Noujaim is an American documentary film director. Born on 17 May 1974 in Washington, D.C., she was raised in Kuwait and Cairo before moving to Boston. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1996 with degrees in visual arts and philosophy. Noujaim's early films include *Startup.com* (2001) and *Control Room* (2004). She co-directed *The Square* (2013) with her spouse Karim Amer; the film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature. She later co-directed *The Great Hack* (2019) with Amer, examining the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Other credits include directing episodes of the series *Ramy* (2019) and *The Vow* (2020–2022). Noujaim won a TED Prize in 2006 and has received Directors Guild of America Awards for her documentary work. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (2) ### Directed (1) - *The Great Hack* (2019), Fi1m 65, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/the-great-hack.md) ### Produced (1) — the average rests on these - *The Breadwinner* (2017), Fi1m 84, Executive Producer — [page](https://film.one/film/the-breadwinner-2017.md) ## Complete filmography (15) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *The Man Will Burn* (2026), series, Executive Producer, Director - *Penn F—ing Station* (2024), Executive Producer - *Defiant* (2023), Executive Producer - *Flight/Risk* (2022), Executive Producer - *The Vow* (2020), series, Director, Executive Producer - *Ramy* (2019), series, Director - *The Great Hack* (2019), Director — Fi1m 65, [page](https://film.one/film/the-great-hack.md) - *The Breadwinner* (2017), Executive Producer — Fi1m 84, [page](https://film.one/film/the-breadwinner-2017.md) - *The Square* (2013), Director, Director of Photography - *Rafea: Solar Mama* (2012), Director - *Egypt: We are watching you* (2007), Director - *Control Room* (2004), Director, Executive Producer, Director of Photography, Writer - *Only the Strong Survive* (2002), Camera Operator - *Down from the Mountain* (2001), Director of Photography - *Startup.com* (2001), Director, Editor, Director of Photography, Producer ## Gallery - ![Jehane Noujaim (2011)](https://film.one/media/person/680988/gallery-f60d8aec7b0c.jpg) Jehane Noujaim (2011) — Assttheothrs, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/Jehane.jpg/1280px-Jehane.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Jehane Noujaim](https://film.one/media/person/680988/gallery-bb777099e62c.jpg) Jehane Noujaim — Festival Ambulante / Karloz Byrnison., CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Jehane_Noujaim.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) ## Awards ### Other awards — 1 won - TED Prize 2006: TED Prize (won) *From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.* --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/jehane-noujaim