Tonje Hessen Schei - Documentary filmmaker
Tonje Hessen Schei is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who has worked with independent documentary production since 1996. Her films focus on human rights, the environment and social justice.
Tonje is the director of DRONE, a documentary on the secret CIA drone warfare.
Since it's release in 2014 DRONE has won Best Norwegian Documentary and Checkpoints, the human rights award, at Bergen International Film Festival and the Film Peace Prize at Tromsø International Film Festival. The film received the award as The Most Valuable Documentary of the Year at Cinema for Peace in Berlin. DRONE just got the Amanda award for best Norwegian documentary 2015.
Through DRONE Tonje has been covered extensively in national and international media. Including national television broadcast with NRK, TV2, as well as national newspapers Aftenposten, VG and Dagbladet. Internationally media includes BBC, CNN, The Guardian, the Monocle, Vice, Wired Mag, Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, Democracy Now ! and many more.
Tonje directed and produced PLAY AGAIN and INDEPENDENT INTERVENTION, which have won several international awards. The films have been screened on all continents in over 100 countries, and are used by schools and universities globally.
In the U.S., Tonje worked for ENG (Electronic New Group, LA) and she was co-distributor and the researcher for documentaries All Power to the People ! (1997) and Downwinders (2000). In Norway, she worked for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK (2005-2006).
Tonje was the Festival Director of Human Rights Human Wrongs (2011), Scandinavia's sole documentary film festival that focuses only on human rights. Tonje started Ground Productions in 2005, an international documentary production company based in Portland, OR, USA and Oslo, Norway. Tonje is a director at Flimmer Film in Norway