Project Description
Bianca Giaever
FSC Associated Fellow 2024-25
Bianca Giaever is an independent radio producer and filmmaker whose stories have appeared on This American Life, Radiolab, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Formerly an audio producer at The Daily, she brought in a third grader to discuss the impeachment, profiled the radio host Delilah, and interviewed the space reporter about cosmic questions. Her short film, the Scared is scared, was named “Web Video of the Year” by USA Today and her film work has won a Webby award and a Daytime Emmy. She is the creator of Constellation Prize, a podcast from The Believer Magazine, and a recipient of the 2025 Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University.
FSC Works
Free Help documents 40 days in the spring of 2024, during which filmmaker Bianca Giaever set out in New York City and offered no-strings-attached free help to anyone who asked. Wearing a sandwich board with Free Help emblazoned in massive letters, Bianca does her best, but often fails to help the oddball parade of strangers who come her way. Over the course of the film, Free Help offers a series of portraits, as Bianca’s clients bare their souls and share their stories through the process of “help.” At its heart, the film is an ambivalent ode to New York City in 2024 — a portrait of an often cruel city and the outsized personalities, unapologetic weirdos, and uncompromising dreamers who continue to build their lives here.