Terry Sanders

Director, producer and writer Terry Sanders is a two-time Oscar winner who has produced and/or directed more than 70 award-winning dramatic features, theatrical documentaries, television specials and portrait films of major American artists, writers and musicians. His latest film, 9th Circuit Cowboy, The Long Good Fight of Harry Pregerson, is out now on VOD through Vimeo on Demand and Amazon. While at UCLA Film School, he produced and shot the Oscar-winning dramatic short film A Time Out of War, the first student film to win an Academy Award. After 10 years writing and directing narrative films with his brother Denis (including War Hunt, which introduced Robert Redford in his first movie role), Sanders joined forces with documentary film producer David Wolper and wrote, produced and directed five films including The Legend of Marilyn Monroe, narrated by John Huston. He subsequently made documentaries through the Terry Sanders Company, and in 1976 formed with his partner Freida Lee Mock the American Film Foundation, and over the next decades produced and/or directed dozens of award-winning films including Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, which won the feature documentary Oscar. Among many other awards, Sanders also won the Primetime Emmy for Lillian Gish: An Actor’s Life For Me.

Talks

The Evolution of 9th Circuit Cowboy

By Terry Sanders | February 2, 2021

The Evolution of 9th Circuit Cowboy

Academy Award-winning director Terry Sanders on how he came to make his latest film, a documentary portrait of the late Judge Harry Pregerson.

What I Learned Working on The Night of the Hunter

By Terry Sanders | August 16, 2017

What I Learned Working on The Night of the Hunter

Director Terry Sanders shares memories, script pages and drawings by Charles Laughton from his time on the iconic movie.