Nora is a cinematographer and director. Bridging both the vérité documentary and commercial worlds, she works on a wide array of projects, from larger budget films with bigger teams to one-man-banding it on a shoestring. Nora began her career on National Geographic’s Hard Time, where she spent a year documenting life in various American prisons. This led to relationships with clients such as PBS, OWN and Discovery. In 2012, Nora completed her Masters with Merit from The London Film School with a concentration in Cinematography. She co-directed and shot SKIN, a documentary short which screened at festivals throughout Europe and she directed and photographed Waterbabies, which screened at festivals in Europe and the in the USA. Later Nora worked on Ken Burn’s award-winning series, Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies, which aired on PBS in 2014, DarkNet Season One and Two which aired on Showtime. Nora joined a team of accomplished Cinematographers on Years of Living Dangerously S2, which aired on National Geographic. Nora later shot on several Joe Berlinger documentary series including Wrongman 2018, and Killing Richard Glossip 2017. Nora also shot on This Is Life with Lisa Ling airing on CNN, and several Great Big Story branded shorts also on CNN. She worked on the Netflix documentary series Follow This and 7 Days Out. She also worked with Amy Berg on The Case Against Adnan Syed on HBO. Nora traveled with a bare bones crew to Guantanamo Bay to produce and shoot a film directed by Johanna Hamilton, featuring the legal team behind the 911 pre-trial hearings - The Trial aired on The Guardian in 2019 in partnership with Field of Vision. In 2019 Nora spent weeks near the edge of the Bering Sea filming with a Yupik community who would become America’s first climate change refugee’s - the feature documentary film, Newtok, premiered at Doc NYC and was shown at COP26. More recently Nora has branched out to direct and shoot branded content for a variety of clients. Nora was commissioned by the luxury fashion label, MAIYET, to concept, direct and shoot several short portraits of craftsmanship which she filmed in India and Italy. Last year Nora directed a commercial series for Delta Airlines in collaboration with the NWSL celebrating the NWSL’s 10th year anniversary. A bi-cultural childhood as well as duel Swiss/American citizenship has made Nora comfortable on the road and in the field having filmed internationally with shoots in Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, Central America and counting.
*Nora lives with her family on a farm in upstate New York.
For all inquires:
noraballard@gmail.com