How We Get Free (2023)
Directed by Geeta Gandbhir & Samantha Knowles

Over the course of two years, HOW WE GET FREE follows Elisabeth Epps as she works to end cash bail on all fronts: from bailing people out of jail to protesting in the streets to running for office as one of the first abolitionist candidates in Colorado.
HBO Documentary Films Presents. A New York Times Production.

GEETA GANDBHIR (DIRECTOR) embarked on her career in narrative film under the guidance of Spike Lee and Sam Pollard. As a Director, credits include the series "Born in Synanon" for Paramount, "Eyes on the Prize" for HBO, "Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power," which was nominated for the 2022 Critics Choice Award, won a 2023 SIMA Award, and is nominated for two 2023 Emmys. She directed and show ran the series "Black and Missing" for HBO which won a 2022 NAACP Award for Best Directing, a 2022 Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Series, a 2022 ATAS Honors Award, and a Cinema Eye Honors for Best Series. She directed the film "Apart," with Rudy Valdez, for HBOMax, which was nominated for an NAACP Award and won a 2022 Emmy Award. Her short film from 2020, "Call Center Blues," with Topic Studios was shortlisted for the 2021 Academy Awards. She directed an episode "The Asian Americans" for PBS, which won the 2021 Peabody Award. Additional directing credits include the six-part series "Why We Hate" for Discovery, and "I Am Evidence" for HBO which won a 2019 Emmy, DuPont Award, and ATAS Award. Her film "Armed with Faith" for PBS also won a 2019 News and Documentary Emmy, an episode of the Netflix series "The Rapture," focusing on rap artist Rapsody, "Prison Dogs," which she co-directed with Perri Peltz, and "A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers," for PBS. She also played a co-director and co-producer role in the "A Conversation on Race" series in collaboration with The New York Times Op-Docs. This series earned recognition, including an Online Journalism Award for Online Commentary, an AFI Documentary Film Festival Audience Award for Best Short, and a MacArthur Grant. She also co-produced the HBO film "The Sentence," directed by Rudy Valdez, which received a 2019 Primetime Emmy.

SAMANTHA KNOWLES (DIRECTOR) is an award-winning Brooklyn-based filmmaker. Most recently she won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing in a Documentary Series, and the Gracie Award for Best Director of a National TV Program for the HBO docu series “Black and Missing”, which brings attention to black and missing persons cases that are routinely neglected by the police and the media. She was also nominated for a Black Reel Award for Outstanding Documentary for “Black and Missing”. The series also won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Series, a Television Academy Honors Award, and an AAFCA TV Award for Best Documentary. In 2021, she partnered with Hewlett - Packard to direct “Generation Impact: The Coder”, which was featured in the inaugural “Brand Storytelling” event at Sundance Film Festival. In 2018, she directed “The Blue Line” which examined the controversy that erupted when a small town painted a blue line on the street in support of police in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, was featured in NBC’s Meet The Press Film Festival, and is now part of the prestigious New York Times Op-Doc series. Samantha also directed and produced the award-winning short documentary “Why Do You Have Black Dolls?” which is inspired by a question asked of an 8-year old girl and examines the history and significance of the black doll.

RABAB HAJ YAHYA (EDITOR) is an Emmy-nominated documentary editor and a Sundance Edit and Story Lab Fellow. Her recent work includes the award-winning feature documentary SPEED SISTERS (HotDocs 2015), LOVE THE SINNER (Tribeca 2017) and the web series THE SECRET LIFE OF MUSLIMS (Peabody Finalist, Vox and USA Today, 2016). Rabab has also edited numerous documentaries commissioned by the Al Jazeera Documentary Channel, including ENEMIES OF THE SOUTH (2015), which was featured in multiple prime-time slots on the network. In between projects, Rabab has dedicated a significant amount of her time helping aspiring editors and filmmakers, through training and pro-bono consultations in the Middle East, West Africa, and the Balkans. Rabab speaks English, Arabic, and Hebrew fluently and currently lives in New York. 

Producers
Sweta Vohra
Jess Devaney
Kathleen Lingo

Executive Producers
Nicholas Kulish
Sam Dolnick
Anya Rous

Executive Producers for HBO
Nancy Abraham
Lisa Heller
Sara Rodriguez

Director of Photography
Julia Liu

Coordinating Producer
Alana Hauser

Associate Producers
Jot Sahi
Ryah Aqel

Production Coordinators
Sarah Yi Fineman
Morgan Hulquist