Steve James is best known as the director, producer, and co-editor of Hoop Dreams, which earned him the Directors Guild of America Award and the MTV Movie Award for Best New Filmmaker in 1995, and won virtually every documentary prize when it was released. He recently produced and edited The War Tapes, the first war documentary shot by American soldiers themselves. The film won the Best International Documentary Award at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival. James’ previous documentary, Reel Paradise (2005), was James’ fourth film to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically. He also served as an executive producer, story director, and series editor on The New Americans (2004), a seven-hour miniseries on the lives of contemporary immigrants that aired to critical acclaim on PBS. The series won two Golden Hugos at the Chicago International Television Festival and the 2004 Independent Documentary Association Award for Best Limited Series for Television. James produced, directed, and edited the documentary Stevie (2003), which won the grand jury prize at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, as well as other major prizes internationally. The acclaimed feature was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and landed on more than a dozen “Ten Best Films of 2003” lists. His dramatic films include the theatrical feature Prefontaine (1997), which premiered at Sundance, and cable movies Passing Glory (1999) and Joe and Max (2002), which was nominated for an ESPN Espy Award.

Peter Gilbert is one of the filmmakers who made Hoop Dreams, serving as a producer and director of photography. He has had a distinguished career in producing, directing, and photographing documentaries, feature films, commercials, and music videos. In 2004, he premiered the Emmy nominated With All Deliberate Speed, the first work in the new series “Discovery Docs,” which he co-founded with the Discovery Network. He also recently executive produced the Sundance Festival Grand Jury and Audience award winning film, "The Gods Tired of Us (2005); executive produced the award-winning Deadline (2004), broadcast in prime-time on NBC; and produced and directed A Time for Dancing (2003). His earlier work includes All the Rage (1999); the Emmy Award–winning documentary Vietnam: Long Time Coming (1998)—for which he also won the Directors Guild of America Award for Best Directing—Prefontaine (1997), as cinematographer and producer; Stevie (2002), as co-cinematographer and co-producer; and Married in America (2002), as principal photographer. His cinematography work also includes American Dream (1991). He is a director with Workhorse Media, in Los Angeles; Maysles Films and a member of Kartemquin Films, in Chicago.