Anne-Frédérique Widmann is the director of the documentary film FREE MEN, making its U.S. premiere in Austin. Told through the charismatic voice of inmate Kenneth Reams, FREE MEN is a story of human resilience : how can we find a sense of purpose in life when all signs of hope seem lost?
Questions of human rights and justice have been at the core of Anne-Frédérique’s work as an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker.

In her previous film, Migrants, Deadly journey to Europe, she followed migrants on their dangerous route from Niger to Sicily, through the desert and the chaos of Libya. The film was nominated for the Europa Prize 2018. Another of her documentaries, An Eye for an Eye: The Vengeance of the Gaddafi Clan (2014), was nominated for the Europa Prize, and finalist at the Italia Prize. She was also awarded the Nicolas Bouvier Prize for best documentary for her work in Colombia.

Widmann co-founded with her husband, the editorial cartoonist Chappatte (The New York Times, der Spiegel), the Windows on Death Row art & documentation project, which opened in Los Angeles in October 2015 and toured the U.S until its closing show in New York at the end of 2017. The couple also worked on a five-part web comics journalism series for The New York Times, Inside Death Row, published in May 2016.