BETH LANE

SPEAKER | ACTOR | DIRECTOR | PRODUCER | WRITER

Beth Lane is an award-winning filmmaker, keynote speaker, actor, writer and founder whose work sits at the crossroads of art, moral courage and human dignity. She does not simply tell stories — she builds movements around them.

Her directorial debut, UnBroken, is the true story of her mother Ginger and six siblings — the only known family of seven Jewish siblings to survive the Holocaust together, hidden on a farm 60 km East of Berlin by two Christian farmers who risked everything to save them. The film launched on Netflix on Yom HaShoah in April 2025, debuting at #5 in the U.S. Top 10 with over 1.5 million streams, and became Oscar-qualified in February 2025. It now streams on Netflix (US), Prime Video (US, UK and Australia), RTVE Spain, Vimeo, Filmzie, Fawesome and Tubi — with Canal+ France arriving in November 2026. People Magazine covered the story exclusively. Kveller named it among the 12 essential Holocaust films streaming today alongside Eleanor the Great, Nuremberg and We Were the Lucky Ones. Richard Roeper of ABC-7 Chicago called it "an amazing film. It's a great, beautiful, brilliant piece of journalism."

As a keynote speaker, Beth draws on her extraordinary personal history — as a second generation survivor, a newly minted German citizen and a filmmaker who spent seven years bringing this story to the world — to move audiences from apathy to audacity. Her signature talk, "The Audacity to Be an Upstander," is a masterclass in moral courage: what it looks like, what it costs and what becomes possible when ordinary people refuse to look away. She has spoken at the United Nations in New York in recognition of International Holocaust Remembrance Day and delivers talks to Jewish federations, Holocaust museums, universities, corporate audiences, interfaith organizations and women's leadership conferences worldwide. Booking: tiffanie@theweberfamilyartsfoundation.com | 917-412-9265.

UnBroken has screened in over 50 cities — at the United Nations in Vienna, at a sold-out Paris Theatre in New York City with over 450 people lined up around the block, and at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Chicago, the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw and the Kitzbühel Film Festival in Tyrol, Austria. The film had its German premiere at the Lichtbrücke International Human Rights Festival in Dachau in July 2026, and on September 25th the National Pedagogical Museum in Prague will screen the documentary alongside their Rescuers of Children exhibition, which features Paula and Arthur Schmidt as two of the honored subjects.

Beth is the founder and President of the Weber Family Arts Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to combatting antisemitism and hate through the arts by sharing stories of hope. The Foundation's Educational Learning Guide — with a foreword by Liam Neeson, created by Journeys in Film — is available at unbrokenthefilm.com for educators and community organizations worldwide.

Beth earned her MFA at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, where the genesis of UnBroken took shape. It was there that she presented her academic paper Sonic Representation of Jewishness on Screen and Off at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music symposium hosted by the Lowell Milken Center — a credential that has since opened doors across the scholarly and institutional communities in which the film now travels.

As a playwright, her one-woman show LINA — a spiritual exploration of her birth grandmother Lina Banda Weber, who perished at Auschwitz in 1943 — began as a 15-minute piece for The Barrow Group's FAB (For, About and By Women) series and became the thematic foundation for UnBroken. Under the guidance of playwright Hanay Geiogamah, LINA has since been reimagined as a deeper exploration of numerology, legacy and identity, and is currently in development and seeking funding.

Before stepping behind the camera, Beth built a distinguished career as an actor and singer. The daughter of an attorney and a ballet teacher, she trained as a dancer from an early age — performing with Joyce and Byrne Piven's Young People's Company in Evanston, studying in Chicago with Ruth Page, Stone/Camryn and Lou Conte's Hubbard Street Dancers, and at Interlochen Arts Academy. She holds a BA in English from the University of Michigan and trained as an actor with William Esper in New York.

In New York, Beth performed at the Metropolitan Opera in Bluebeard's Castle alongside Jessye Norman and Samuel Ramey, worked extensively in regional theater and nightclubs nationwide, and debuted her jazz album Lies of Handsome Men at the legendary Iridium Jazz Club. A longtime Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop and former Board Member of The Barrow Group Theatre Company, she is known for interpretations that reveal truth with theatrical precision.

In Los Angeles, Beth appeared in Francis Ford Coppola's live cinema experiment Distant Electric Vision and in Alexander Baack's Hollywood Musical. She portrayed Sara Jane Moore in West Coast Ensemble's production of Assassins, which received the Los Angeles Critics Award for Best Ensemble. She has also performed as a stand-up comedian at Caroline's on Broadway.

Beth hosted more than 40 episodes of Banter with Beth, a podcast featuring conversations with artists, activists and scholars, and serves as a sought-after moderator and panelist on film, antisemitism, media literacy and social impact across cultural and academic institutions.

She is a woman who has spent her life asking the question her son Oliver poses in UnBroken: "When you're faced with adversity, who do you become?" Everything she creates is her answer.

Contact for speaking engagements:
tiffanie@theweberfamilyartsfoundation.com | 917-412-9266

Contact for acting, directing and creative projects:
bethlane.com | @bethlanefilm