About

Azza Cohen (she/her) is an award-winning documentary director, cinematographer, editor, producer, and videographer who immerses herself in every aspect of filmmaking behind and in front of the camera, from large- and small-scale documentary to political media — always through a lens of activism.

Azza currently serves as the official videographer for historic Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris. She joined the Biden-Harris Administration following her graduation from Stanford’s MFA Program in Documentary Film and Video, where she was funded by the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program. Her MFA thesis FLOAT!, a The New Yorker documentary short, captures Azza’s Bubbe learning to swim at 82. In its ongoing film festival run, FLOAT! has already won various awards including First Prize for the Marlyn Mason Award for New Voices, New Perspectives by Women in Film at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, and both Best Documentary and the Audience Favorite at the DC Shorts International Film Festival. Check out FLOAT! here!

At Stanford, Azza also directed Dear Hormazd, a 16mm profile of a Zoroastrian couple urging their son to keep the faith; directed Nothing left to do but marvel, an experimental short inspired by her own chronic migraines and filmed entirely in soft focus; and co-directed Bruce’s Dream, an immersive short about a retired racehorse learning to ride again as a therapy horse for nonverbal teenagers on the autism spectrum. And she produced classmate Drew de Pinto’s thesis film Compton’s ‘22, which was nominated for the 38th Annual IDA Documentary Awards for best student documentary film.

Azza earned her first Master’s Degree from the University of Galway in Culture and Colonialism through a Mitchell Scholarship. For her dissertation, Azza documented the socioeconomic effects of the ‘Brexit’ vote on border communities along the border dividing Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Azza directed and produced her first films as an undergraduate at Princeton. Refugee, Refugee, a micro documentary that profiles a Rwandan refugee adjusting to life in Trenton, New Jersey, was selected for the Manhattan International Film Festival, the Art All Night Film Festival, and the Princeton Student Film Festival, and won the Audience Choice Award at The Trenton Project’s Final Screening. Azza’s second film, Specks of Dust, is award-winning short documentary that follows activists risking everything to fight human trafficking in India for over two decades. Explored from the perspective of their five-year-old daughter Barish, the film explores the personal implications of devoting your life to others. Specks of Dust has been taught as part of human rights and gender studies curricula around the world. 

Azza has also collaborated on numerous social justice projects with colleagues across the industry. She worked with director and executive producer Vanessa Roth on National Geographic’s IMPACT with Gal Gadot, a docu-series uplifting six remarkable women’s contributions to their communities. At documentary firm CreativeChaos vmg, Azza worked on The Great Divide, a forthcoming documentary on the debate over U.S. gun laws; Bleed Out, a 2018 HBO documentary investigation into medical error; and This Changes Everything, a 2019 Netflix documentary exploring gender discrimination in Hollywood. 

Azza is eternally grateful to Andrew Jarecki, who gave her a chance — and her very first film credit — as an intern on Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.