Zach Ingrasci
Director & Co-Founder
Los Angeles
Zach Ingrasci is a director and the co-founder of Optimist. Best known for directing the feature documentaries Living On One Dollar and Salam Neighbor, Zach’s films have been released by Netflix, Amazon Prime, National Geographic, and HBO. His 2020 short documentary, The Undocumented Lawyer, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and went on to Hot Springs, DOC NYC, Flickers Rhode Island, St. Louis and other top festivals, winning best documentary at The Boston Shorts Fest. It premiered on HBO in 2021. He also directed the feature documentary, Five Years North, which premiered at Full Frame Film Festival in spring 2020 and showed at MountainFilm, DocLands, and won the Grand Jury Prize at Flickers’ Rhode Island and the Grand Jury Prize at DOC NYC. The film had its theatrical release at Film Forum in 2021 and premiered on PBS’ America Reframed in 2021. Five Years North was a finalist for the 2021 duPont-Columbia Awards for Outstanding Journalism. In 2022, Zach was named to DOC NYC and HBO’s 40 under 40 list and this June, Zach premiered his new feature documentary, This Is Not Financial Advice, at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival.
Every Optimist film is accompanied by an impact campaign to create measurable outcomes. His projects have raised over $91.5 million for the films’ causes and have changed over 275,000 lives.