Avoid. - Anonymous employee Brave New Films Employee Review

I had the extreme misfortune to not follow the advice on previous Glassdoor reviews. I worked for Brave New Films for about a year, and was not fired, but chose to leave. I write this in an attempt to dissuade any social rights activists from believing that this company is worth your time. It's not. Ever wondered the reason why Brave New Films has been around for a decade and not won any awards, not broken one million views, and not made waves in recent years? It's because of the declining founder, Robert Greenwald, with a close second going to lackadaisical upper management who don't help staff. What they do not tell you when interviewing is that Greenwald is a micromanager with Founder's syndrome, who only comes into the office twice a week yet manages absolutely everything. I'd worked at many different film situations before BNF, with many different leaders, and he is the worst director I have ever had to work with for many reasons. In my time with the company, SIX people left and THREE were fired... out of less than 20 staff. This is an astronomical attrition rate. (There were so many people leaving, I literally had to count on my fingers just now to remember everyone.) Company morale is extremely low because everyone thinks he's a nightmare. The closer to production you work, the more he will oversee everything you do. He seeks to hire the best, and then treats them as his personal assistants. Why this is problematic, besides the ego and abusive narcissism characteristics, is that Greenwald has very LITTLE vision creatively, and so you will be going back and forth, draft after draft, edit after edit, for every project. He wants to control it all but DOESN'T EVER KNOW what he wants: Imagine that scenario! He won't give hard deadlines, budgets, length of video projects, or even the main POINT of the piece, but then when you take a step in any direction creatively, he will criticize and hyper analyze your choices, ask for triple the amount of work, and then change his mind the next day... and the next... and the next. He emails at all times day and night, demanding immediate responses. His idealization of only being present in office two days a week is at COMPLETE odds with understanding subject matter to effectively direct projects... and he directs every. single. project. There is no tried and true method at BNF despite a decade of work, so each project is like starting over, and high attrition rates has encouraged his attitude of treating staff like they are completely replaceable (a classic abusive narcissist trait, btw.) You will feel bewildered at first, then fiery, then just complacent while you run looking for another job. Besides internal staff, Greenwald has a habit of ruining relationships with outside partners, especially those collaborating on projects... he won't show them edits, and insults their importance. I tried numerous times to address these issues with Greenwald personally. Pretty much every time he basically said he didn't care what I thought. In fact, on one occasion I simply shared that perhaps we had too many projects on our plate and the team was stretched thin. (We were working on over 15 documentaries at the time.) His response: He threatened my job. The reason upper management and the board don't reign him in is they are sitting pretty on the highest paychecks in the company, trying to use Greenwald's name for funding purposes, and are out of touch, as they don't have to work as directly with him, so are furthest from the line of fire. The most egregious issue here for me is underlying misogyny, mistreatment of Fellows, and lack of respect for the work of partners in social justice realms. I watched time and again as Greenwald went against the suggested ideas of partners who had decades more knowledge of how to approach a topic or group, but if it didn't match Greenwald's idea of a subject, he would ignore suggestions, to the detriment of many campaigns. Partners don't wish to work with him again, nor does staff at Brave New Films. At the end of the day, true leadership is not separate from respect and compassion, but flourishes within it. We are past the time on this planet for egos.