Deborah Scranton

Who is Deborah Scranton?

Deborah Scranton is an American film director. She directed The War Tapes, a documentary detailing the personal stories of soldiers in the Iraq War. It was the first of its kind in that she sent the soldiers video cameras so they can shoot raw footage of their actual, on hand experiences in combat. The film won several honors, including Best International Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival and Best International Documentary at BritDoc in 2006 and was shortlisted for an Oscar in 2007.

Scranton also produced and directed Bad Voodoo's War, for Frontline/PBS and ITVS. The show first aired April 1, 2008. It reprised her virtual embed technique, focusing on a squad of U.S.soldiers deploying as part of the 'Surge'.

Her latest film, Earth Made Of Glass, had its world premiere at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival in World Documentary Competition. A political thriller set in Rwanda and France, Earth Made of Glass features the President of Rwanda Paul Kagame as one of the film's main characters. Earth Made of Glass aired on HBO in April 2011 and was nominated as Best Documentary by the Producer's Guild of America. The film won a Peabody Award in 2012.

In 2007, she was a visiting fellow at The Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University with the Global Media Project in the Global Security Program and taught a senior seminar on documentary filmmaking and social change.