Greenwald has earned 25 Emmy Award nominations, two Golden Globe nominations, the Peabody Award and the Robert Wood Johnson Award. He was awarded the 2002 Producer of the Year Award by the American Film Institute.
Greenwald moved to Los Angeles in 1972, where he continued working as a theater director at the Mark Taper Forum.[8] He later launched a career as a director for television, establishing first Moonlight Productions[8] and then Robert Greenwald Productions (RGP), and began creating theatrical films, television movies, miniseries and documentaries with a distinct social and political sensibility. Moonlight Productions was responsible for 34 films, and RGP has brought more than 45 films to audiences worldwide. In 1977, Greenwald received his first of three Emmy Award nominations for producing the television movie 21 Hours at Munich[9] about the massacre at the 1972 Olympics. His next Emmy nomination came in 1984 for directing The Burning Bed,[10] one of the most-watched television movies of all time.[11] Based on a true story, The Burning Bed has been credited as "a turning point in the fight against domestic violence."[12] Greenwald also directed theatrical films such as Xanadu (1980), Sweet Hearts Dance (1988), Breaking Up (1997), and Steal This Movie! (2000).[13]
Xanadu received mostly negative reviews. The film underperformed at the box office, grossing only $23 million against a reported $20 million budget, a total that was insufficient to offset all related costs and return a profit. A double feature of Xanadu and another musical released at about the same time, Can't Stop the Music directed by Nancy Walker, inspired John J. B. Wilson to create the Golden Raspberry Awards (or "Razzies"), an annual event "dishonoring" what is considered the worst in cinema for a given year.[14]Xanadu won the first Razzie for Worst Director and was nominated for six other awards.
At Brave New Films, Greenwald has produced and directed numerous feature-length documentaries, along with many short films and videos.[18] In 2013, Greenwald released War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State and a documentary about the U.S. government's drone program, Unmanned: America's Drone Wars.[19] His full-length feature documentary, Making a Killing: Guns, Greed, and the NRA (2015), illustrates the connection between gun industry profits and gun deaths in America.[20]
Following the release of 16 Women and Donald Trump, which featured women who publicly accused President Trump of sexual misconduct, Greenwald hosted three of the accusers at a December, 2017 press conference in New York.[21] In 2018, Greenwald created a short film to thank three Black women targeted by Donald Trump entitled, Thanks.[22]
In 2019, Greenwald released Suppressed: The Fight to Vote about voter suppression in the 2018 Georgia election, in which Democrat Stacey Abrams narrowly lost to Republican Brian Kemp in the race for governor.[23]Variety described the film as "scary and galvanizing" and said it demonstrated that "what happened in Georgia has implications that extend far beyond that race."[24] The film was updated and released in April 2022 to expose voter suppression laws passed in 19 states across the United States. The 2022 film, entitled Suppressed and Sabotaged: The Fight to Vote features additional stories from voters in Florida, Arizona, and Texas.
As coronavirus raged throughout the US in the summer of 2020, Greenwald's short film, Maddie’s Grandparents: A Preventable COVID Tragedy, about a Florida teenager who turned her grief at losing both her grandparents to COVID-19 into activism,[25][26] made national headlines, as did her response to President Trump telling Americans not to let COVID “dominate” their lives.[27] Greenwald also joined forces with American rock musician Tom Morello for No Justice No Peace, a short video about police violence that “spotlights the contrast between the racial injustice in the U.S. and the Trump administration's position on it”[28] in honor of George Floyd.[29]
Greenwald has applied the principles of guerrilla filmmaking at Brave New Films, using small budgets and short shooting schedules to produce political documentaries[30] and then distributing them on DVDs and the Internet in affiliation with advocacy groups such as MoveOn.org.[30] Brave New Film's methods are "rewriting the book on how movies are made and distributed."[31] Greenwald's innovative model is said to be "working magnificently":[32] "Millions of viewers have seen BNF films via grassroots 'house parties' and independent online DVD sales",[33] as well as in more traditional theater screenings and online.
As a pioneer in alternative methods for effective progressive political campaigns,[34][35][36][37][38] Greenwald has eschewed traditional distribution models of studio and network releases.[35][36] He was among the first to post political online shorts and viral videos on YouTube and elsewhere on the internet, as well as releasing full-length documentaries online in a series of “real time” chapters.[36][37][39] Greenwald's group takes full advantage of a variety of media outlets, such as Facebook and Twitter, and harnesses new distribution channels as soon as they emerge.[38][40] A 2019 profile described the approach as a "marketing alchemy of feeds, hashtags, likes, favorites, hearts, @s, memes, soundbites and video clips, all edited, spliced and calibrated to grab attention in a hyperspeed world."[41]
This approach has "inspired hundreds of thousands of people to take action and forced pressing issues into the mainstream media."[42] He has been called "one of the most prominent and influential voices in new media."[43] According to a Brave New Films website, as of 2013[update] its documentaries "have been streamed across all 7 continents and have been viewed over 70 million times."[44]
The Los Angeles Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild Honors Robert Greenwald as "A Producer and Director who uses his talent and artistry to promote better understanding between people and advance the cause of peace, justice and freedom." - June 8, 2003;[57]
Rage for Justice, Citizen Activist of the Year, 2004.[65]
Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE)’s City of Justice Award 2005.[57]
