Rachel “Ruchie” Freier, a no-nonsense Hasidic lawyer and mother of six who is determined to shake up the “boys club” in her Hasidic community by creating Ezras Nashim, the first all-female ambulance corps in NYC.
93QUEEN is set in the Hasidic enclave of Borough Park, Brooklyn, where EMS corps have long been the province of men. Though the neighborhood is home to the largest volunteer ambulance corps in the world known as Hatzolah, that organization has steadfastly banned women from its ranks.
Now Ruchie and an engaging cast of dogged Hasidic women are risking their reputations—and, literally, the futures of their children—by taking matters into their own hands to provide dignified emergency medical care to the Hasidic women and girls of Borough Park.
The Filmmakers
Paula Eiselt
Director/
Producer/
Cinematographer
Paula Eiselt is an independent filmmaker and graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with a double major in Film Production and Cinema Studies. Her work has been supported by the Independent Television Service (ITVS); the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program with support from Open Society Foundations and Just Films | Ford Foundation; the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA); Fork Films; the Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund, with support from the Oath Foundation; the International Documentary Association Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund; Picture Motion; the Hartley Film Foundation; the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP); and Women Make Movies (WMM).
In 2017, Eiselt had the great privilege of being selected as a Creative Producing Fellow for the 2017 Sundance Creative Producing Summit and was also a 2016 IFP Documentary Lab fellow. Most recently, Eiselt was invited to join the prestigious POV/Wyncote Filmmaker Fellows cohort at the PBS Annual Meeting in May 2018. In addition to her feature docs, Eiselt is developing a New York Times Op-Doc on Jewish identity in collaboration with the team behind the “In Conversation on Race” series. Previously, Eiselt served as Director of Programming at The Edit Center where she launched and designed their Documentary Filmmaking program.
Additional credits include researcher for The Undocumented (Independent Lens); and AP for Bronx Princess (POV). Additional directing credits include short films Priscilla (NY New Filmmaker Series at Anthology Film Archive); My Mom the Dead Head (Cannes Film Festival's Short Film Corner) and The Fitting Room (NY Jewish Student Short Film Festival).
Eiselt currently lives in NJ with her husband, two curious sons and a sassy daughter… although she will always remain a New Yorker.
Heidi Reinberg
Lead Producer
After distinguished careers in fashion and nonprofit, Reinberg’s move into film production was inspired by Academy Award–winning documentary director Cynthia Wade. Reinberg produced Wade’s debut feature documentary Grist for the Mill, which aired on Cinemax, and Wade’s award-winning Shelter Dogs, which premiered on HBO’s premiere doc strand, “America Undercover.” The Boston Phoenix called the film “astonishing, a stirring, emotional, irresistible portrait . . . unforgettable,” while Variety deemed it “a heartfelt, surprisingly suspenseful pic. Shelter Dogs has plenty to say about society in general, with moral issues getting more complicated, not less.”
Since then, Reinberg has produced for such acclaimed documentary directors as Academy Award– winning Ross Kauffman, and the celebrated filmmakers Jeremiah Zagar and Mai Iskander. Her projects have focused on a range of subjects, including conflict photojournalists, Alzheimer’s disease, and Cairo’s indigenous trash collectors, and her films have appeared at such prestigious festivals as Sundance, Berlin, and Hot Docs, and on broadcasters such as HBO, PBS, LOGO, and Al Jazeera America.
Reinberg has worked on several series for HGTV, directing the network’s popular House Hunters International, Beachfront Bargain Hunt, and Lakefront Bargain Hunt shows. She also served as a consulting producer for Cinelan, one of the foremost producers of award-winning branded content, with whom she developed multiple series for Fortune 100 clients, including GE and Microsoft.
In addition to 93QUEEN, Reinberg is currently producing Maisie Crow’s UNTITLED HIGH SCHOOL BORDER PROJECT, which was awarded an IDA Enterprise Fund Development Grant. That film was also selected for this year’s Good Pitch–Local in Dallas.
WORKSHOP Dates
November/December 2013
June/July 2014
January/February 2015
June/July 2016
Learn More
Festivals & Awards
2017 Tribeca Film Festival
2018 Hot Docs Film Festival