John Zaritsky

Who is John Zaritsky?

John Zaritsky is a Canadian documentarian film maker. He was the recipient of an Academy Award in 1982 for his documentary Just Another Missing Kid. He also won a Cable Ace Award in 1987 for Rapists: Can They be Stopped, a Golden Gavel Award from the American Bar Association for My Husband is Going to Kill Me, a Robert F. Kennedy Foundation Award for “Born in Africa”, and an DuPont-Columbia Award in 1994 for Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo.

Born in St. Catharines, Ontario, and a graduate of Denis Morris Catholic High School in 1961, he studied at the University of Toronto. Prior to entering film, Zaritsky worked as a newspaper reporter for seven years. In 1970, he received a Ford Foundation Fellowship to study at the Washington Journalism Center. In 1972, he won a National Newspaper Award for his investigative reporting at the Globe and Mail newspaper.

His films have won awards at the New York Film Festival, the American Film Festival, Banff Television Festival, Houston International Film Festival, Columbus Ohio Film Festival, and the John Muir Medical Film Festival. Three films, “Broken Promises”, “Born in Africa”, and “Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo” were nominated for Emmy Awards.