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FIXERS
TYPE: Documentary Feature
GENRE: Documentary
STATUS: Development
LOGLINE
Scrappy “fixers” on either side of the US–Mexico border navigate looming danger, culture clashes, and personal ambitions. Operating in the murky space between foreign media and local realities, their choices and compromises shape the stories that inform our understanding of the world.
SYNOPSIS
FIXERS offers a look into the hidden world of local journalists who take the greatest risks for the least reward. Foreign media hire "fixers" to gain access to challenging locations and connect with reticent sources. The film shows the struggles and strategies that go into fixing and asks: Are fixers stuck playing gopher and matchmaker, cropping their own societies to fit foreign clients’ frames, or do they have the power to sway international perceptions from behind the scenes? Rich with dark humor and unexpected poetry, the film reveals the strange human cost of getting the story.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
As a journalism student, I thought I had a thorough understanding of the industry. I was never taught about fixers until my first assignment in the Democratic Republic of Congo – a revelation that would reshape my perspective on global reporting. Our fixer was our lifeline, yet the relationship revealed a fundamental truth: there can be no translation of local reality into foreign knowledge without insider-outsider brokers.
Throughout my decade in video journalism, I've witnessed how fixers – often former tour guides, English teachers, or third culture kids with cosmopolitan outlooks – navigate between local and global interests. While covering Venezuela's elections, I received the byline despite my limited Spanish, while our fixer was credited as "additional reporting." This experience crystallized how fixers' status struggles and conflict-management strategies directly shape what becomes news and how we understand the world.
Like Kirsten Johnson's CAMERAPERSON, which reveals the intimate rapport between filmmaker and subject, this film examines how local realities get mediated into foreign knowledge. Having worked with fixers across continents, I've seen how they reconcile political and cultural conflicts while transmitting information across divides.
We explore these brokers who stand at the crossroads of local and global forces. My hope is that this film illuminates not just news fixers, but how knowledge itself is mediated through chains of brokerage – a process that shapes our collective reality.
KEY CREW
Ora DeKornfeld - Director/Producer
Ora DeKornfeld is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and editor. Her work has been showcased in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, as well as on CNN, Netflix, and National Geographic. She directed, produced, filmed, and edited the Emmy-nominated short USA V SCOTT, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2020 and was acquired by The New Yorker. She directed, shot, wrote, and edited a New York Times Opinion video, THIS IS WHAT A POST-ROE ABORTION LOOKS LIKE, which was nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy Award in 2023. She directed several episodes of Vox’s original Netflix documentary film EXPLAINED, and was cinematographer and editor on the feature documentary film MIJA, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022. MIJA was acquired by Disney+ and earned an IDA Award and Independent Spirit Award nominations. Ora recently was part of the editing team of Elizabeth Lo’s MISTRESS DISPELLER (Anonymous Content / Impact Partners).
Emma D. Miller - Producer
Emma D. Miller is a Gotham Award and Cinema Eye–nominated filmmaker whose work explores the messiness and beauty of being human. Her work has screened at festivals including Venice, Toronto, SXSW, and CPH:DOX, and been supported by organizations including Sundance Institute, Impact Partners, Anonymous Content, and Field of Vision. She recently produced Elizabeth Lo’s MISTRESS DISPELLER (Oscilloscope Laboratories), winner of more than a dozen festival prizes, and directed the short documentary THE SCHOOL OF CANINE MASSAGE, a Vimeo Staff Pick. She also produced Iliana Sosa’s SXSW award-winning WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND (ARRAY Releasing / Netflix), a New York Times “Critic’s Pick." As development executive for nonfiction at Concordia Studio, she worked on Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning films that premiered at Sundance, Tribeca, and Telluride, including TIME, BOYS STATE, and PROCESSION. Other credits include Showtime’s COUPLES THERAPY film, the Oscar-nominated short KNIFE SKILLS, the Sundance award-winning feature UNREST (Netflix), and an upcoming feature for National Geographic Documentary Films. Named one of DOC NYC’s “40 Under 40” and one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” she was a 2023 Sundance Producing Lab Fellow and 2024 JFI Filmmaker in Residence.
Noah Amir Arjomand - Producer
Noah Amir Arjomand is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, researcher, and journalist interested in how we connect and communicate, and what happens when communication breaks down. His first (co-directed, co-produced) feature documentary EAT YOUR CATFISH screened in competition at festivals including IDF Amsterdam, Full Frame, Sheffield DocFest, and Santa Barbara; won prizes at Istanbul FF and Antenna DF; aired on POV on PBS, NHK (Japan), and TV3 (Spain); and won the 2024 Emmy Award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary. Noah is also a sociologist (PhD Columbia University) who studies newsmaking from behind the scenes. His book FIXING STORIES (Cambridge University Press) about fixers in Turkey and Syria was named by Foreign Affairs as one of the best books of 2022. He has published numerous articles and been an invited speaker at universities and conferences around the world as an expert on transcultural media production and ethics. His writings and photos as a journalist have been published by The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, PBS Frontline, Dissent, and many others. Noah was previously the Helmke Postdoctoral Scholar for the Center for International Media Assistance at Indiana University; he is a Chancellor’s Fellow in Media & Cultural Studies at the University of California in Riverside.
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