About
Transformer Films, based in New York City, is a production company specializing in documentaries that interrogate and dissect accepted narratives.
Founded by veteran investigative journalists Bob Coen and Eric Nadler in 2003, their award-winning films on international geopolitics, have been aired by the world’s leading broadcasters, including ARTE Europe, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, NHK Japan, Aljazeera, National Geographic and PBS.
ERIC NADLER
Eric Nadler is a New York-based documentary filmmaker, television producer, screenwriter, journalist and author. His work has been featured on PBS, the Sundance Channel, and NatGeo TV in the United States. and broadcast internationally on ARTE, France 2, Channel 4, NHK, Al Jazeera, CBC, ABC, WDR, SBS, among others. He co-produced and co-directed (with John Friedman) Stealing the Fire, nominated as Documentary of the Year by the International Documentary Association (2002); and with Bob Coen helmed Anthrax War, nominated for the Prix Europa (2009); Deadly Depths, winner of the Prince Rainier III Special Award at the Monte Carlo TelevisionFestival, the Golden Cotton at the Guangzhou (China) International FilmFestival and the Gold Panda Award at the Sichuan TV Festival (2014); and Shadow War in the Sahara (nominated for the Prix Europa as Investigative Program of the Year (2015).
Nadler was a producer and screenwriter of the indy sci-fi feature 2B: The Era Of Flesh Is Over starring James Remar and Kevin Corrigan which premiered at the Woodstock Film Festival (2009). He was the show-runner for Court TV’s controversial weekly series Confessions (2000) and Investigative Editor of the Emmy-Award-winning PBS newsmagazine South Africa Now (1990). He reported and produced several programs for PBS Frontline in the 1990s investigating Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the BCCI banking scandal, the U.S.-Saudi Arabian ‘special relationship’ and the leaking of nuclear materials from the former USSR. He co-wrote The Abortion Pill which aired on PBS in 1997.
As a print journalist, his articles have been published by ProPublica, Rolling Stone, Harper’s, The Nation, The New Republic, Mother Jones, the Village Voice, Paper Magazine, N.Y. Daily News, and the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, among others. He is the co-author (with Phillip Nobile) of The United States of America: How the Meese Commission Lied About Pornography (1986) and (with Bob Coen) Dead Silence: Fear and Terror on the Anthrax Trail (2009).
BOB COEN
Bob Coen is an award-winning filmmaker, author, investigative journalist and former war correspondent who has spent more than thirty years documenting struggles for social justice and challenging accepted narratives about our world.
Raised in colonial Africa, his early documentaries chronicled the post-colonial conflicts of the southern African region and South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle. These included Mozambique, the Struggle for Survival, Angola, Triumph or Tragedy? and Zimbabwe’s Racial Revolution. He also covered events in the “Frontline States” for the groundbreaking and Emmy award-winning PBS newsmagazine show South Africa Now devoted to the anti-apartheid struggle.
In the 1990s he became CNN’s roaming Africa correspondent and spent a decade covering conflicts and politics across the continent. He was awarded the Bayeux Prize for best television war correspondent for his reporting on the Liberian civil war in 1997.
In 2003 he co-founded Transformer Films with Eric Nadler in New York City, focusing on investigative documentaries that examine the geo-politics of the 21st Century. Productions include Anthrax War (2009) and Shadow War of the Sahara (2015) both commissioned for ARTE, Europe’s leading cultural broadcaster and short-listed for the Prix Europa as outstanding documentaries. He co-authored the book Dead Silence - Fear and Terror on the Anthrax Trail with Eric Nadler, based on their research making Anthrax War.
In 2020 he founded Áhkku Vision in Finland with the aim of connecting the stories of the Global South and the Far North. The company is developing a series of documentaries that explore how the themes of colonization, human memory and opposing world views intersect in late stage capitalism.
He also serves on the board of directors of The Institute for the Healing of Memories NA, an international non-profit dedicated to personal and collective healing in communities recovering from violence.