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Development
2018
2020

The Spies Among Us

IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund Grantee

  • Jamie Coughlin, Director/Producer
  • Gabriel Silverman, Director/Producer
A man sitting in an empty small room looking down at his feet

About the Project

Synopsis

Before Big Data, there was the Stasi -- East Germany’s secret police that gathered and weaponized the personal information of its citizens to maintain control of the ruling communist party. In Untitled Stasi, a former prisoner of the Stasi goes on a quest for the truth after he finds out his brother informed on the family, and in the process discovers the lasting traumas of living in a surveillance state.

Gabriel Silverman, Director/Producer

Gabriel Silverman is a two-time Emmy nominated documentary director and journalist, and co-founder of SideXSide Studios. Silverman’s debut feature, TRANSMILITARY, won the Audience Award at SXSW in 2018, is streaming on Amazon Prime, and aired on Logo TV. His New York Times Op-Docs short precursor, TRANSGENDER, AT WAR AND IN LOVE, was nominated for an Emmy and helped to change federal policy under the Obama administration. Silverman was named to the 10 Filmmakers to Watch list by The Independent in 2018. He began his career at The Washington Post as a video journalist. He has won more than a dozen awards for his reporting and filmmaking, including an Edward R. Murrow Award for his investigative work, a White House News Photographers Award for Best Documentary, and a GLAAD Media Award. Silverman is an alum of the IFP Documentary Lab, Film Independent/CNN Docuseries Lab, and RIAS Fellowship.

Jamie Coughlin, Director/Producer

Jamie Coughlin is an Emmy-nominated journalist, writer and producer. Coughlin wrote and produced TRANSMILITARY which won the Audience Award at SXSW in 2018, and went on to broadcast on Logo TV and stream on Amazon Prime. Her New York Times Op-Docs short precursor, TRANSGENDER, AT WAR AND IN LOVE, was nominated for an Emmy and helped to change federal policy under the Obama administration. Her work has been supported by the International Documentary Association, Catapult Film Fund, Miller/Packan Film Fund, GLAAD Media Institute, Film Independent, and the Frameline Completion Fund. Coughlin is the recipient of a GLAAD Media Award, White House News Photographers Award for Best Documentary. She is an alumnus of the IFP Documentary Lab, Film Independent/CNN Docuseries Lab, and RIAS Fellowship. Coughlin and her partner, Gabriel Silverman left their newsroom jobs in 2015 to start SideXSide Studios.