Brent Renaud and Craig Renaud
Directors and Producers
TAKING THE HILL
In Iraq for the filming of OFF TO WAR
TAKING THE HILL filmmakers Brent and Craig Renaud were raised in Little Rock, Arkansas. They got their start in filmmaking working with award-winning documentary producer Jon Alpert in places like Kosovo, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Bolivia, China, Pakistan, Iraq and the United States.
In 2001, the Renaud brothers collaborated on a groundbreaking series of documentary specials on college football rivalries for ESPN. The specials became the popular ESPN series THE SEASON, and helped the brothers develop and showcase a raw cinéma vérité style, rarely seen on television at the time. In 2005, their feature-length documentary DOPE SICK LOVE was nominated for an Emmy® for the Best Documentary.
Their most recent project OFF TO WAR, the 10-part documentary series for Discovery Times Channel, followed the Arkansas National Guard during their entire deployment to Iraq, as well as their families back home. The Renaud brothers were nominated for Best Directors by the Directors Guild of America for the project and won the Overseas Press Award. They also won “Best Documentary” at the San Francisco International Film Festival, grand prize at the JVC Tokyo Video Festival, and OFF TO WAR was selected for competition at the Tribeca Film Festival and Silverdocs.
The brothers are currently in production on the Discovery Times Channel feature documentary, TAKING THE HILL, which follows veterans running for Congress, and an HBO documentary about the 50th anniversary of desegregation at Central High School in Little Rock.