Bruce Sinofsky, Oscar-Nominated Documentary Filmmaker, Dies at 58

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Bruce Sinofsky died early Saturday morning in his sleep after a long battle with the complications of diabetes, his frequent collaborator Joe Berlinger told Variety. He was 58.

Sinofsky covered a range of topics in his career — from heavy metal to murder cases.

He is best known for the “Paradise Lost” trilogy, a series of films he made with Berlinger about the West Memphis Three, a group of teenagers convicted, despite a lack of evidence, of murdering and sexually mutilating three prepubescent boys. Prosecutors claimed the children were killed as part of a Satanic court ritual. Those films helped draw attention to a number of miscarriages of justice associated with their trial and conviction.

Public pressure resulted in the Arkansas Supreme Court allowing the three men — Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley, Jr. and Jason Baldwin — to be released after serving 18 years and 78 days in prison. Sinofsky was nominated for an Oscar for 2011’s “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory.”

He also won an Emmy for co-directing 1996’s “Paradise Lost” and a Director’s Guild Award for teaming with Berlinger on 1992’s “Brother’s Keeper,” which looked at an elderly man accused of murdering his brother.

Sinofsky was also passionate about music, as evidenced by his work on “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster” and “Good Rockin’ Tonight: The Legacy of Sun Records” for PBS/American Masters.

His other credits include episodes of the Sundance Channel series “Iconoclasts,” an installment of The History Channel’s “10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America,” “Oprah’s Master Class: Civil Rights Special,” and numerous other film and television projects.

Sinofsky also won a Peabody, an Independent Spirit Award and accolades from the Sundance Film Festival.

A memorial service will be held in March.