Shroud

Director and Producer Ilana Trachtman

When Rita, a feisty grandmother to 14, learns she has metastatic cancer, she commissions her fiber artist daughter to sew her burial shroud. Over a weekend, Rita and her daughters and granddaughters sew the garment together, confronting her impending death with creativity, intention, humor, and love.

Ilana Trachtman

Director, Producer

Ilana Trachtman has been directing and producing Emmy Award-winning nonfiction films for over 30 years, with credits on PBS, HBO, ABC, Discovery, Showtime, Lifetime, the Sundance Channel, and others. Her topics have ranged from the legacy of slavery in Latin America (Black in Latin America with Henry Louis Gates, PBS) to female Gulf Coast shrimper activists (Our Heroes, Ourselves, Lifetime), glassblowing for at-risk youth (The Arts Advantage, ABC), the original LGBTQ rights activists (The Pursuit, PBS), and reality show contestants living as cowboys (Texas Ranch House). Ilana supervised production on PBS’ History Detectives and Sundance’s Big Ideas for a Small Planet. Her independent films—Praying with Lior, Mariachi High, Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round—have screened at hundreds of festivals and arthouse cinemas and before thousands of faith communities, organizations, and schools, received numerous awards, and are always accompanied by robust impact campaigns with long track records as educational tools.