HILAN WARSHAW is an Emmy Award-winning director and writer. He has produced and directed internationally broadcast documentaries and films including Wagner’s Jews (WDR/ARTE, PBS-WNET, Israel’s Channel 8, Deutsche Welle and others); Secret Song with opera star Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet (PBS-AllArts, SVT, Medici TV, Allegro HD, EuroArts); Through the Darkness: Arnold Schoenberg and Richard Gerstl (ORF, SVT, YLE, and Medici TV); My Boléro (PBS-GPB, Medici TV; 2024 Southeast Emmy winner, Best Arts/Entertainment Long Form); In the Key of Bach (PBS-GPB); In the Station (PBS-KCET); Mahler in New York (SVT, Czech TV, Panorama Films); The Faces of Carmen (Westdeutscher Rundfunk/ARD, Marquee TV, C-Major Entertainment); and Honorable Mr. Morgenthau (2026 Kadima Jury Prize Winner, Miami Jewish Film Festival; numerous international festivals and screenings; upcoming theatrical runs and PBS-WNET television broadcast). In addition to these films of his, Hilan’s other producing, writing, and editing credits include documentaries and specials broadcast on WDR/ARTE, NHK, PBS, and other international networks.
He is a LABA NYC Arts and Hermitage Arts Fellow and an Associates Board Member of the Hollywood Radio and Television Society, and has served as an Emmy voter. A trained violinist and orchestral conductor, Hilan has directed hundreds of multi-camera concert captures for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, and other major musical ensembles, earning two Emmy nominations for concert programs broadcast on PBS and NBC stations. He wrote and hosted Piece by Piece, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s Emmy-nominated video series exploring the stories behind musical masterworks, and has produced/edited video and documentary projects for organizations including Carnegie Hall, Warner Music, New York City Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, League of American Orchestras, Fund for the City of New York, and American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
He has been a lecturer and panelist at venues including London’s Barbican Centre, Stockholm’s Royal Academy of Arts, Yale University, Columbia University, Boston University, NYU’s Deutsches Haus, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Minnesota Opera, Wagner Society of New York, and the Morgan Library & Museum, among many others. His research essays have been published in anthologies from Cambridge University Press, McFarland Press, and Königshausen & Neumann and in periodicals including The Wagner Journal, and he has taught film courses at Barnard College and Western Carolina University. He holds a B.F.A. and M.F.A. from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and studied orchestral conducting at Mannes College of Music and the Aspen Music School.