My So-Called Enemy

Filmmaker Bios

Lisa Gossels, Director/Producer/Editor

Eden Wurmfeld, Producer

Eden Wurmfeld is a producer of fiction and documentary films.  Her award-winning credits include the fiction films, “Kissing Jessica Stein” and “Swingers” and the feature documentary, “Sunset Story.”  She is currently producing “Habeas on the Gate,” a feature film about the unlikely friendship between a Park Avenue lawyer and a Guantanamo detainee.  Eden just produced “No Impact Man,” a feature documentary about a man and his family who struggle to spend a year living in the heart of New York City while having no net impact on the environment.  “No Impact Man” premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and is being released theatrically by Oscilloscope.  Named by Variety as one of “10 Producers to Watch for 2002,” Eden was a finalist for the 2003 Indie Spirit Motorola Producer’s Award.

Justin Schein, Director of Photography and Co-Producer

Justin Schein has been shooting and directing character-driven social issue documentaries for more than 20 years. He has shot on over 60 films for broadcasters such as HBO, PBS, The BBC and the Discovery channel. His film, “No Impact Man,” premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and continues to screen throughout the world.  It documents a man and his family as they struggle to spend a year in the heart of New York City while having no net impact on the environment. Presently, Justin is shooting several documentary projects, including “Upside-down and Backwards,” a hybrid documentary and animated film about dyslexia, with Academy Award® winning producer Peggy Stern and animator John Canemaker.  Justin served as co-director of photography with Albert Maysles on “The Four Seasons Lodge,” a film about a group of Holocaust survivors’ final season together in the Catskills.  It will air this summer on PBS.  Justin received his Masters in Documentary Filmmaking from Stanford University and went on to found Shadowbox Films in 1998.  He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, filmmaker Eden Wurmfeld and their sons Micah and Jesse.

David Mehlman, Editor

David was a supervising editor of the 2007 Oscar-winning short subject documentary, “Freeheld,” that also won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance.  He edited and sound designed the 2005 Academy Award winning animated short documentary, “The Moon and the Sun.”  Recent television credits include editing 11 episodes of the critically acclaimed “IFC Media Project” documentary series; “Tribes of America,” a new cinema-verite series about subcultures directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (“Brothers Keeper,” “Paradise Lost,” “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster”); “Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood,” a portrait of the creator of Bugs Bunny for TCM; “The First 48,” A&E’s documentary series about homicide detectives; and MTV True Life:  “I’m a Gun Owner” and “I’m a College Baller,” which he directed, produced and edited.  David received a master’s degree in Documentary Film and Video Production from Stanford University.  He co-founded Shadowbox Films with Justin Schein, in 1998, and lives in New Jersey with his wife and three sons.

Toby Shimin, Editor

Toby began her film editing career in 1986 as a sound editor on “Fire from the Mountain” and “Working Girls,” which won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.  She switched to picture editing in 1988 and has cut 24 films to date.  Her first film, “The Children’s Storefront,” was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Subject Documentary.  Many of her feature documentaries premiered at the Sundance Film Festival before their theatrical premieres:  “Martha and Ethel,” “A Leap of Faith,” “Out of the Past,” which won the Audience Award, “Miss America” and “Everything’s Cool.”  The theatrically released “Three of Hearts: a Post-Modern Family,” premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.  Toby has cut many PBS documentaries, including:  “Not Just For Laughs: a portrait of Neil Simon” (American Masters), “Listening to Children: a Journey with Robert Coles,” “AIDS Warriors” (Wide Angle), “Seabiscuit” (American Experience), for which she was nominated for an Emmy, “Two Square Miles” (Independent Lens) and the Emmy-nominated series, “Reporting America at War.”  Toby is a principal of Dovetail Films. She studied film at Hampshire College, where she earned a Bachelors of Arts.

Nathan Larson, Composer

Nathan Larson is the former lead guitarist for art-punk band Shudder to Think. His substantial credits as a composer for film music include 20th Century Fox’s “Boys Don’t Cry,” Todd Solondz’s “Storytelling,” “Palindromes,” songs for Todd Haynes’ “Velvet Goldmine,” Joel Schumacher’s “Tigerland,” “Prozac Nation,” Lukas Moodyson’s “Lilja 4-Ever,” “Little Fish” with Cate Blanchett, Stephen Frears’s “Dirty Pretty Things,” Fox Searchlight’s “Choke.” Larson has received the Gras Savoye Award for Best Music at Cannes 2005 for his work on “The Woodsman.”  In 2009 the Ghent Film Festival awarded Nathan “Best Original Score” for the Swedish drama “A Rational Solution.”  He recently wrote the score for  ”The Messenger” with Woody Harrelson.  Nathan lives in New York City with his wife Nina Persson, and maintains parallel careers as a performer, producer and recording artist.

Advisory Board

Macky Alston: Award-winning documentarian (“Family Name,” “Questioning Faith,” “The Killer Within”); Director, Auburn Media, a division of the Center for Multifaith Education at the Auburn Theological Seminary; board member, Hartley Film Foundation.

Judith Helfand: Award-winning documentarian (“A Healthy Baby Girl,” “Blue Vinyl,” “Everything’s Cool”), President of Working Films.

Albert Maysles: Renowned documentary cinematographer and filmmaker (“Salesmen,” “Gimme Shelter,” “Grey Gardens,” etc.), President, Maysles Films.

Joline Mahklouf Rukab: Producer, “Encounter Point,” conflict resolution consultant.

Nancy Schwartz Sternoff: Director, The Dobkin Family Foundation; Board of Directors, American Jewish World Service and Jewish Women’s Archive.

Margot Stern Strom: Founder and Executive Director, Facing History and Ourselves.

Our Crew