Ann McElhinney
Ann McElhinney is a New York Times best-selling author, journalist, podcaster, film producer and director and one of the most successful crowdfunders in the world.
Together with her husband, Phelim McAleer, McElhinney, wrote and produced OCTOBER 7, a verbatim play based entirely on the testimony of survivors of the October 7 attack on Israel. It had a six-week, off-Broadway run and the only play in New York that needed permanent police protection.
The New York Post said the play was “spellbinding,” the Jewish Journal described it as an “astonishing collage” and “unflinching.” Theatre Scene said OCTOBER 7 was an “incredibly powerful” play that has to be seen by everyone.
Lawyer and academic Alan Dershowitz said the play was “absolutely brilliant.” “This just allowed people to speak for themselves. You were put back in time. You were hearing their voices. It’s brilliantly structured. It has everything you want. It has drama, veritas, emotion – everything you want in a play. And that’s why I want this play to be seen by as many people as humanly possible.”
McElhinney has raised $6M in 8 separate crowdfunding campaigns. Their movie Gosnell – The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer was the most successful film project ever on Indiegogo. It raised $2.3M in just 45 days. She is a producer on the My Son Hunter movie (2022), starring Laurence Fox and Gina Carano.
McElhinney also produced the play FBI Lovebirds: UNDERCOVERS based on the text messages of Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. Other plays produced by McElhinney include Ferguson, Obamagate, Oh Gosnell: A Play About The Truth and Mermaids Vs. The Alliance.
Additional acclaimed projects include the movie Gosnell – The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer and the NYT Best Seller Gosnell – The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer. The book debuted at #3 Amazon Best Seller and sold out in 3 days after publication.
The Gosnell project has attracted an enormous amount of media coverage on television, radio and with hundreds of articles written about the book, film and the historic crowdfunding.
McElhinney further directed and produced FrackNation – A Journalist’s Search for the Fracking Truth, a documentary on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and the natural gas boom in the US and abroad. Variety said it was a “briskly paced…mischievous pic.”
Among the numerous podcasts McElhinney has written and produced include The Ann & Phelim Scoop, Climate Change on Trial, The Harvey Weinstein Trial: Unfiltered, Kevin Spacey Trial: Unfiltereed Podcast and Serial Killer: A True Crime Podcast, which reached the top 10 in all true crime podcasts worldwide.
She produced and presented Climate Change on Trial, which was a daily reenactment of the Steyn Vs Mann defamation trial and among the most popular science podcasts worldwide. Professor Micahel Mann sued writer and broadcaster Mark Steyn for claiming his climate alarmist “hockey stick” graph was fraudulent.
She also produced and directed Not Evil Just Wrong (2009), a film which examines the devastating consequences of global warming hysteria. And Mine Your Own Business – the first documentary that asks difficult questions of the environmental movement. Canada’s The National Post said “Mine Your Own Business is devastating because it combats prejudices and fantasies with pictures that refute thousands of weasel words.”
McElhinney has made documentaries for the BBC, CBC (Canada) and RTE (Ireland). The Search for Tristan’s Mum concerned the case of Tristan Dowse, a baby who was adopted and later abandoned by an Irish man and his wife in Indonesia.
McElhinney was featured in and was the Associate Producer of the highly controversial documentary Return to Sender (2005) for CBC about the adoption of a Romanian child by a rich Canadian couple who years later sent the child back.
McElhinney has written for or appeared on FOX News, CNN, BBC, CBC (Canada), ABC (Australia), RTE (Ireland), The Sunday Times and The Irish Times. She has worked as a journalist and filmmaker in the US, Canada, Romania, Bulgaria, Chile, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Ghana and Uganda.
She is an entertaining and sought-after public speaker. McElhinney and McAleer live in Venice, California, with their two cats Mr. Top Cat and Mr. Scaredy Cat.