Alma Har'el

Director/ Producer/ Founder, Free the Bid

Alma Har’el is an award-winning director who brought to life visionary work in documentary, music videos, TV commercials and scripted narrative. She is also the first woman in DGA Awards history to be nominated for both commercial directing (2018) and narrative directing (2020).

Her most recent film, HONEY BOY, written by, and starring, Shia LaBeouf, made her the first woman to win the DGA Award for First-Time Feature Film. The film was distributed by Amazon Studios.

In 2016, Har’el founded her non-profit, Free The Bid, which transformed the global hiring practices of female directors in advertising, and then grew beyond measurable success into FREE THE WORK. FTW advocates for, and showcases, over 2,000 underrepresented filmmakers in 21 countries worldwide.

Har’el’s passion for encouraging equality across entertainment, along with her directing work, landed her in Fast Company’s “Most Creative People of 2018”, Adweek’s “Disruptors of 2018" and on Indiewire’s list of leading "Women Who Made the World of Filmmaking a Better Place in 2018."


Sundance Film Festival 2019
Honey Boy


Sundance Institute History
Alma Har'el