Ask E. Jean with filmmaker Ivy Meeropol

Filmmaker Ivy Meeropol will join us for a post-film discussion following our screening. 

Ask E. Jean is the thrilling story of E. Jean Carroll’s life, from her early days as Miss Cheerleader USA to her rise as a trailblazing journalist, author, and beloved advice columnist. Carroll broke barriers as the first female editor at Esquire, Playboy, and Outside, helping to redefine women’s roles in media with her sharp wit and fearless voice. 

In recent years, she reignited public discourse by standing up to power, becoming the only woman to beat Donald Trump twice in court, and sparking a national conversation about truth, accountability, and resilience. This film is a portrait of an indomitable woman who proved it’s never too late to reclaim your voice, rewrite your story, and change the world.

About Ivy Meeropol:

Ivy Meeropol is the director of Ask E. Jean, a feature documentary film about the advice columnist and journalist E. Jean Carroll, the only woman to beat Trump twice in court. Her previous feature documentary After the Bite, about the explosion of great white sharks and seals on Cape Cod, premiered to great acclaim July 2023 on HBO. She premiered her HBO documentary Roy Cohn: Bully, Coward, Victim  at the 2019 New York Film Festival and in 2020 the film was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Historical Documentary. She was the Senior Story Producer on the CNNFilms documentary The End: Inside the Last days of the Obama White House, which premiered at the National Archives in Washington, DC, and was one of the highest rated of CNN’s original films. She directed and produced the feature Indian Point, about an aging nuclear power plant close to New York City, which was honored with the Frontline Award for Journalism in a Documentary Film and aired on NHK during the anniversary of Fukushima in Japan. 

Ivy created and directed the nonfiction series The Hill (Sundance Channel), about Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) and his young staff (nominated for best series by the International Documentary Association). She produced the feature documentary Museum Town, which premiered at SXSW, and has produced and directed for the Emmy Award winning climate change series Years of Living Dangerously (National Geographic) and for Death Row Stories (CNN), Executive Produced by Alex Gibney and Robert Redford. 

Ivy ’s debut film, Heir to an Execution (HBO), explored the legacy of her grandparents Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. It premiered at Sundance and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. Kenneth Turan, of the Los Angeles Times, called it, “An exceptional documentary... a compelling emotional narrative laced with explosive political material. ” Ivy was a Sundance Institute Fellow and has been awarded grants from the Sundance Documentary Fund, the NY State Council for the Arts, and the MacArthur Foundation. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences.