Bob Balaban
Director, Producer, Actor

Bob Balaban is an award-winning producer, director, actor and writer.

He received a 2010 Emmy Award nomination for directing Georgia O’Keeffe, and three 2008 Emmy Award nominations: for his performance in Recount (HBO) and for directing and producing the HBO film Bernard and Doris.

Balaban produced and co-starred in Gosford Park, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. He also produced and directed the hit Off-Broadway play, The Exonerated and later directed the film version for Court TV.

He produced, directed and wrote the award winning film, The Last Good Time, and directed Parents. He is the creator-writer-producer of the IFC animated series Hopeless Pictures and executive produced two seasons of Celebrity Charades for AMC. Recently, Balaban has directed four episodes of Nurse Jackie (Showtime).

Balaban has appeared in nearly a hundred movies, including Midnight Cowboy, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Best in Show, The Mexican, Ghost World, and Moonrise Kingdom. He will soon be seen in Stephen Frears’ Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight, Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, and George Clooney’s The Monuments Men. Balaban has numerous Broadway appearances including The Inspector General, for which he received a Tony nomination

Preet Bharara
Lawyer

Preet Bharara serves as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, having been nominated for the position by President Barack Obama on May 15, 2009, and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate in August of the same year. As United States Attorney, Bharara oversees the litigation of all criminal and civil cases brought on behalf of the United States in the district, which consists of Manhattan, Bronx, Westchester, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland and Sullivan counties. He supervises an office of more than 450 employees, including more than 200 Assistant United States Attorneys.

Bharara is a member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee and serves as Chair of its Subcommittee on White Collar Fraud. Bharara is also a Co-Chair of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Working Group of the interagency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force.
Bharara oversees numerous criminal and civil cases, including groundbreaking financial fraud and insider trading prosecutions, historic international terrorism cases, and the resolution of alleged civil rights violations at various public venues. Since becoming United States Attorney, Bharara has formed a specialized unit in the Criminal Division dedicated to addressing the significant threats posed by large-scale sophisticated frauds and emerging cyber crimes. He has created another specialized unit of prosecutors, merging two previously independent units, to pursue and prosecute the leaders of organizations that engage in transnational acts of terrorism, narco-terrorism, narcotics trafficking, and money laundering. Under his supervision, the office continues to combat corruption by city, state, and federal officials, as well as violent crime in New York City and the rest of the district.