Ric Esther Bienstock is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker best known for her ground-breaking investigative documentaries. Her films and TV series, including Enslaved: The Lost History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (with Samuel L. Jackson), The Accountant of Auschwitz, Tales From the Organ Trade, Sex Slaves (aka The Real Sex Traffic), Ebola: Inside an Outbreak (aka Plague Fighters), Boxing: In and Out of the Ring,Penn & Teller’s Magic and Mystery Tour and Ms. Conceptions, have screened at over eighty international festivals and aired internationally on every major network including Netflix, HBO, PBS, CNN, Discovery, National Geographic, A&E, TLC, Animal Planet, Amazon, EPIX, CBC, History Channel, Channel 4, BBC, ITV, ZDF/Arte, ProSieben and more.

In September 2024, Bienstock was honoured with a Silver Circle Emmy Award in New York for 25 years of “significant and impactful contributions to the industry”.  Bienstock was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest civilian honour, for “her commitment to raising awareness of global events and conflicts through film.” She also received the Gordon Sinclair Award for Broadcast Journalism for her “exceptional body of work and significant contribution to the international profile of Canadian television journalism.”

With a passion for social issues, her films, often years in the making, stand out as the definitive films on whatever topic she tackles. As a result, she has been asked to speak before governments, international organizations and law enforcement the world over. Bienstock gave a TEDx talk about her body of work (entitled “How Ebola, Porn and the Human Organ Trade Led Me to the Ordinary”). She was also a featured speaker at Toronto’s IdeaCity, and she has given talks at numerous Universities both at home and internationally including Princeton, UCLA, Columbia, the New York Academy of Medicine, McGill, Concordia, Simon Fraser University, Carleton and others.

Her work has garnered dozens of prestigious awards, including an Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism, two Edward R. Murrow Awards, a Dupont-Columbia Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism, a British Broadcast Award, a Distinguished Achievement Award from the IDA in Los Angeles, two Hot Docs Awards, 5 Canadian Screen Awards, two Donald Brittain Awards for Best Documentary, two Geminis, a Genie, a Royal Television Society Award, multiple Emmy nominations, a BAFTA nomination and two Amnesty International Awards among many others.