Reed Lindsay

Reed Lindsay is a documentary filmmaker and journalist with 20 years of experience reporting, investigating, writing, producing, directing and mentoring around the world. He is the founder and currently the director of Belly of the Beast, an innovative new media organization that covers Cuba and U.S.-Cuba relations. He has lived in Havana, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Port-au-Prince and Cairo and has reported from Libya, India, Venezuela and Honduras, among other countries. His work has been published in more than 20 newspapers and magazines and broadcast on numerous television news networks. Through his filmmaking and journalism, Reed has sought to bring marginalized voices to the fore, to expose injustices and abuse of power, to create awareness about issues that have been ignored or misunderstood and to challenge mainstream narratives that are devoid of context or distort local realities. He has strived to break the traditional correspondent-fixer model of parachute journalism by supporting and collaborating with journalists and filmmakers based in the Global South. In 2021, he won a Telly Award for his work as a producer on Al Jazeera's "India's Acid Attack Survivors" and was co-winner of a One World Media Award and a Telly Award for directing The War on Cuba for Belly of the Beast. In 2014, he won a Gracie Award for Fists of Fury, a short film about a 15-year-old girl in Kolkata, India, striving to be a champion boxer. He was one of the first journalists to enter Libya after the uprising, and co-directed an hour-long film entitled Benghazi Rising that was nominated for a Rory Peck Award as best documentary in 2011. He reported on the Egyptian rebellion from beginning to end, and was co-winner of an Emmy for sound recording for the HBO documentary In Tahrir Square. From 2004 until 2009, he was based in Port-au-Prince, reporting on the struggles of the Haitian people.