David Schisgall

Earlier in his career Schisgall was an associate of Errol Morris, working on A Brief History of Time, Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, Mr. Death, and other projects.^[5] His directorial debut, The Lifestyle (1999), explored suburban swinging culture.^[5] During the 2000s, he served as a conflict reporter for MTV, covering the Second Intifada in Israel/Palestine, the war in Iraq, and the civil war in Colombia for True Life and other programs, reaching millions of young viewers with insights into America’s conflicts abroad.^[6] In 2004, he received the Edward R. Murrow Award for his film about Iraq. Following this, he produced Operation Filmmaker (2007), focusing on collaboration during wartime Iraq.^[7]

In 2007, Schisgall directed and produced Very Young Girls, a documentary about the commercial sexual exploitation of young women in New York City.^[8] Activists in the space called it "the film which launched a movement." He also developed episodes of This American Life for television in 2007–2008.^[9] He co-wrote the screenplay for Our Idiot Brother (2011), a comedy directed by Jesse Peretz.^[10] Another project, Theo Who Lived (2016), documented journalist Theo Padnos’s captivity by an Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria.^[11] In 2020, Schisgall directed and produced The Oil War, which explored America’s military involvement in the Middle East based on the works of Col. Andrew Bacevich.^[12]

Schisgall has served as an Adjunct Faculty member at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.^[13]

Schisgall is married to Evgenia Peretz, a writer for Vanity Fair.^[14]