Artist Irene Lilienheim Angelico
Irene Angelico is the winner of numerous international awards for directing and producing, as well as a Gemini for best writing in a documentary. Her work was included in The Fifty Greatest Documentaries of all Times at the International Salute to the Documentary and selected for retrospectives in London and France.
In 1980, Angelico and her partner Abbey Neidik produced and directed Dark Lullabies about the effects of the Holocaust on the next generation of Germans and Jews. This highly regarded film has garnered many prestigious international prizes, and continues to be shown in special screenings including the inaugural film at the Stratford Festival Forum, the Berlin Arsenal 70th anniversary of the Holocaust, the Inconvenient Films: International Human Rights Festival and Liberation 75 in Toronto in 2021.
Angelico went on to direct and write award-winning series including Black Coffee, about the history and social impact of coffee, Inside the Great Magazines, about the first international media; and The Cola Conquest, about Coca-Cola as a metaphor for America and winner, among others, of the Best Documentary Series by an Independent at Hot Docs, the Gold Apple and the Silver Hugo in Chicago.
Angelico produced and wrote many other highly successful films including The Love Prophet and the Children of God; She Got Game (Guirlande d'Honneur – Milan, Best Documentary – Temecula Valley, Chris Statuette – Columbus); Song for Tibet (Gemini); Vendetta Song (Best Documentary, CIDA Prize, Best Documentary – Quebec Film Critics Association, Best Documentary – Calgary, Best Documentary – Female Eye; Unbreakable Minds, a poignant film that aims to humanize mental illness; Shekinah: the Intimate Lives of Hasidic Women, #1 in the box office for six weeks and Beyond Earth: the Beginning of NewSpace, named by Realscreen as a MipCom Pic for 2017.
Angelico has also been involved in the publication of several articles and two books. With Abbey Neidik and Mark Pendergrast, she edited The Aftermath: A Survivor's Odyssey Through War-Torn Europe, written by her father, Henry Lilienheim, and endorsed by Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Elie Wiesel and the Dalai Lama. She and Yehudi Lindeman co-edited The Third Seder: A Haggadah for Yom HaShoah, which includes new rituals they created uniquely for the commemoration of Yom HaShoah.
Angelico is currently in post-production with First to Stand, a documentary featuring the work of Irwin Cotler and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights; Reaching for Zion, a musical journey about prejudice told through music and featuring Bob Marley’s granddaughter Donisha Prendergast, and releasing Shekinah Rising, the second in a sequel about young Hasidic women.
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