Marc Isaacs

A documentary filmmaker who casts an empathetic and playful eye over his protagonists

Marc Isaacs is a British documentary filmmaker. Since the early 2000s, he has made feature-length and short films exploring a range of themes centred in the UK, often relating to class, migration, and representations of self and other. He has won numerous awards at international film festivals and received an honorary doctorate from the University of East London. A talented hands-on man, he manages to win the trust of his protagonists and draws us naturally and humorously into their lives. Throughout his work, we find one principle: human beings are always more complex than we think. Documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux described him in a "Guardian" article dated from 10th June 2021: “I don’t know exactly what his method is, but he comes across as very adept at building trust with his subjects. They open up to him. But there is also a sense of aloofness, which in the wrong hands could potentially seem superior or unkind, but which most of the time with Marc is a kind of forensic clinical interest, and which helps create an uneasy comedy.”

Documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux described him in a "Guardian" article dated from 10th June 2021: “I don’t know exactly what his method is, but he comes across as very adept at building trust with his subjects. They open up to him. But there is also a sense of aloofness, which in the wrong hands could potentially seem superior or unkind, but which most of the time with Marc is a kind of forensic clinical interest, and which helps create an uneasy comedy.”

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