Jason Osder is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University.
His debut feature, LET THE FIRE BURN, reconstructed the story of the 1985 MOVE fire in Philadelphia entirely from archival sources. It premiered at Tribeca, winning awards for best editing and best new documentary director, and went on to receive the IDA editing award and the Film Independent Spirit Truer than Fiction Award. Distributed by Zeitgeist Films and broadcast on PBS Independent Lens, it reached 1.5 million viewers and has since been recognized as a landmark of American documentary filmmaking, included in the New York Times’ “The Movies We’ve Loved Since 2000” and featured in Bill Nichols’ textbook Introduction to Documentary.
His second feature, WHO KILLED ALEX ODEH? (co-directed with William Lafi Youmans), investigates the unsolved 1985 assassination of a Palestinian-American activist. Supported by the Sundance Institute, Cinereach, and the International Documentary Association, it premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival where it received the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Journalistic Excellence, and its international premiere at the Berlinale. It received the Jewish Film Institute Envision Award for its singular ability to envision a world free of prejudice and hate.
He is currently in development on THE NOAH PROJECT, a personal documentary exploring abuse, memory, and the long shadow of institutional power.