Inbal B. Lessner, ACE, is an Emmy® and Eddie-nominated editor and producer. On her latest project, SEDUCED: Inside the NXIVM Cult, which she co-created with her filmmaking partner, Director Cecilia Peck, she takes on the roles of Lead Editor, Writer and Executive Producer.
“The most common question people have is, ‘Why didn’t she get up and leave when no one was forcing her to stay?’ The brave women who shared their stories with us have struggled with self-blame and shame for falling prey to this cult. All of their voices were instrumental in telling a very complex story, which we hope shines a light on systematic manipulation and coercion.”
Inbal and Cecilia Peck’s last collaboration was the Emmy-nominated feature documentary Brave Miss World, which debuted on Netflix in 2014. It is the story of an Israeli beauty queen, who was raped seven weeks prior to her winning the Miss World pageant, and her crusade to reach out to fellow survivors while trying to keep her own rapist behind bars.
In 2019, Inbal edited and co-produced “The Movies: The Golden Age,” executive produced by Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Herzog. This was the latest in her 4-year-long collaboration with the team that produced CNN’s Emmy-nominated “Decades” series. Inbal has edited seven episodes in the series and was nominated for an ACE Editing Award for “The Nineties: Can We All Get Along.”
Inbal’s editing credits include ReMastered: The Two Killings of Sam Cooke (Netflix Original, Dir. Kelly Duane), nominated for an Outstanding Documentary NAACP Image Award, and Autism: The Sequel, (HBO, Dir. Tricia Regan), a follow-up to the Emmy-winning Autism: The Musical (2007). She edited and co-produced the internationally acclaimed, award-winning, I Have Never Forgotten You, about Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Inbal also directed the docudrama Night Bites and was second-unit producer on the HBO/ARTE documentary Watermarks.
Over the course of her career, Inbal has worked in the cutting rooms of directors such as Davis Guggenheim (Teach), R.J. Cutler (“American Candidate”), Kief Davidson and Daniel Junge (A Lego Brickumentary), Jeremy Simmons (“Transgeneration”), Tracy Droz Tragos (Be Good, Smile Pretty) as well as Natalie Portman’s feature directorial debut (A Tale of Love and Darkness).
Inbal began making films when she was in high school and later produced training films for the Israeli Defense Forces. At NYU, she was the recipient of the prestigious, merit-based, WTC Johnson Fellowship, awarded to one student filmmaker a year. Since moving to Los Angeles, Inbal has edited hundreds of hours of non-scripted network and cable television shows. She was also a Visiting Professor at UNCSA Film School, and a mentor in the Karen Schmeer Diversity in the Edit Room Program.
