My Underground Mother

Director and Producer Marisa Fox, Producers Deborah Shaffer and Kelly Sheehan

Freedom fighter. Femme fatale. Double agent. Filmmaker Marisa Fox’s mother claimed she had been all three. Many years after her death, a page she wrote in a secret diary from a Nazi women’s camp reveals a fourth identity, leading Fox on a global investigation to reckon with the harsh truths she took to her grave.

Phase of Support: Post-Production


Marisa Fox

Marisa Fox

Director, Producer

A veteran print, broadcast and digital journalist, Marisa Fox has been a producer for Channel 13, VH1, Fx, MTV, has won American Society of Magazine Editors awards and nominations for her work at Hearst and Time Inc., and has written extensively on gender, genocide, sexual trauma and extremism for The Daily Beast, CNN, Ms.,The New York Times, Elle, The Forward and Ha’aretz, where she was a U.S. correspondent. She’s also a “she source” for the Women’s Media Center, started by Gloria Steinem. My Underground Mother, Fox’s directorial debut, was awarded two grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others, and led her to curate and unveil one of the only women’s Holocaust monuments in the world, launched with a digital exhibit of women’s testimonies co-curated by USC’s Shoah Foundation.

Deborah Shaffer

Deborah Shaffer

Producer

Guggenheim Fellow and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Deborah Shaffer directed The Wobblies, which was added to the National Film Registry in 2021. Shaffer has focused on human rights, from her Oscar-winning short Witness to War: Dr. Charlie Clements (1984) to the Academy Award-nominated short Asylum (2003) and Ladies First: The Women of Rwanda (Emmy, WNET, 2004). Her most recent film, Queen of Hearts: Audrey Flack (2019), won the Audience Award and Best Documentary at the Hamptons Documentary Film Festival.

Kelly Sheehan

Kelly Sheehan

Producer

Kelly Sheehan has produced over 80 hours of nonfiction television and independent documentaries, including Four Seasons Lodge (2009) filmed in part by Albert Maysles, which premiered at New York’s IFC Center and was theatrically released by First Run Features; the Sundance Festival favorite Crossing Arizona (Sundance Channel, 2006); Follow My Voice with the Music of Hedwig (Sundance Channel, 2007), which premiered at Tribeca and presented by John Cameron Mitchell; the primetime special Mariachi High (PBS, 2012); and American River (WNET, 2021).

Project logline and bios courtesy of the grantees.