TRASH: A Family Story

Growing up, whenever his mom missed the garbage bill, Zach Ben-Amots had to sneak trash bags into the neighbor’s dumpster with his older brother.

[ 2025 | 18min ]

Director, Editor, Photographer | Zach Ben-Amots
Producers | Zach Ben-Amots, Yue Wu
Sound Design & Mix | Bonnie Wild (Skywalker Sound)

In Post-Production

school of fish

The U.S. legacy of eugenics is stored in the archives of California and New York universities. Institutions that once proudly touted their eugenecist founders have removed statues and renamed buildings that stood in their honor, moving the artifacts that hold America’s dark history of racist pseudoscience into the stacks.

[ 2024 | 12min ]

Director, Photographer, Editor | Zach Ben-Amots
Co-Producer | Ma’ayan Porat
Sound Design & Mix | Dan Olmstead

In Production

SANDY: 10 Years Later

10 years after Superstorm Sandy devastated New York and New Jersey, CBS revisited survivors who were interviewed in the immediate aftermath to discover the long-term impacts.

[ 2022 | 56min ]

Director & Executive Producer | Zach Ben-Amots
Producers | Stephanie Cassell, Steve Overmyer
Photographers | Dana Riccardi, Carlos Vasquez, Edgar Ojeda, Jason Gonzalez
Editors | Kathleen Coles, Adam Crawford

2023 Emmy Award Winner for Best Documentary, New York Region
Produced for CBS News New York.

Watch the full documentary on CBS News.

STOLEN: The Unsolved Theft of a $3 Million Violin

Revisiting one of the FBI’s top unsolved art crimes, this hourlong news documentary tells the little-known story of a tragic theft at the end of violinist Erica Morini’s life — and of her instrument, one of the greatest violins ever made.

Director, Photographer, Editor | Zach Ben-Amots
Assistant Producer | Jordan Arseneau

Produced for ABC 7 Chicago & New York.

The Lynching of Henry ‘Peg’ Gilbert

Henry ‘Peg’ Gilbert was sitting in church one evening in 1947 when, about 100 yards away, a calf wandered into the road. This would lead to a sequence of events that seemingly had nothing to do with Gilbert — or with his surprising success for a Black farmer in rural Georgia in the 1940s — but it would eventually end in his lynching.

[ 2020 | 18min ]

Director, Editor, Executive Producer | Zach Ben-Amots
Senior Producer | Mike Beaudet
Photographers | Natasha Chang, Elijah Kaplan, Audrey Adam, Zach Ben-Amots

Produced for ABC 7 Chicago & New York

Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Documentary, New England Region