Victor Schonfeld

Victor Schonfeld is an Anglo-American writer-producer-director based in London whose work across film and fiction explores how private lives are shaped - and often distorted - by institutional power, ethics, and belief. He is the co-director of Beyond the Frame Ltd, his London-based production company, which he runs with co-director Jenifer Millstone. He is a Full Member of PACT, BAFTA, Directors UK, and the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is perhaps best known for The Animals Film (136 mins, 1981), narrated by Oscar-winner Julie Christie, a groundbreaking examination of the exploitation of animals in modern societies. The film generated front page headlines in the UK and Sweden, was released in cinemas in the USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Australia to high acclaim. The film launched Channel 4's World Cinema slot, was later re-released as a British Film Institute classic, and is credited with inspiring generations of vegans. It has never been out of distribution. Schonfeld's feature documentaries have been shown in major film festivals on six continents. His other productions include Courage Along the Divide (ITV, 78 mins), an acclaimed documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Shattered Dreams: Picking Up the Pieces (Channel 4, 173 mins), which won the ACE Award for Best International Documentary and received a US cinema release and national broadcast on the Discovery Channel; It's a Boy! (Channel 4) and Loving Smacks (Channel 4), both examining children's rights; MoneyLove (ITV), exploring the compulsive pursuit of wealth; and the BBC series One Planet: Animals and Us, probing what has changed in human treatment of other species. Schonfeld's scripted drama work includes screenplays commissioned by the BBC and Channel 4, and he has a developed slate of dramatic feature films and limited series. He won a EuroPAWS Award for the development of docu-drama about science. He has judged which fiction feature film projects and documentaries should receive finance from financiers Scottish Screen (now Creative Scotland), and which production training courses should receive the Creative Skillset kitemark for excellence. His journalism and short fiction have appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, Suddeutsche Zeitung, the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, the Jewish Quarterly, the Mechanics' Institute Review, and the Pennsylvania Review, among others. He has worked as a radio network correspondent covering the United Nations and US presidential campaigns. He trained as a feature film producer at the European Media Business School in Madrid and in film directing at NYU. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of London, where he was awarded a Fellowship for Literary Excellence, and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania.