Brent E. Huffman

Brent Edward Huffman (born September 4, 1979) is an American director, writer, and cinematographer of documentaries and television programs, including Saving Mes Aynak (2015).

[10] Brent Huffman is a producer of Finding Yingying (2020), an MTV documentary film that premiered at SXSW in 2020 and won the Breakthrough Voice Jury Award.

A vignette of the documentary called Uyghurs Who Fled China Now Face Repression in Pakistan won a Rory Peck Award in the Best News Feature category at the British Film Institute in London in 2021.

[15] Huffman co-produced The Women's Kingdom (2006), a short documentary about the matriarchal society of Mosuo ethnic minority in China, with his wife Xiaoli Zhou.

[26] On top of the copper reserve in Mes Aynak, it turns out, is an archaeological excavation site, uncovering "thousands of Buddhist statues, manuscripts, coins, and holy monuments ...

Huffman went through substantial scrutiny and restrictions from the Afghan and U.S. officials: every time he visited the site, he had to go through the permission process from the Ministry of Culture, Kabul Police, and the local province.

[28] By 2012, Huffman's account of the struggles of archaeologists in Mes Aynak was published on CNN, an "Op-Doc" on The New York Times, NPR, the Tricycle Magazine, among others.

[29] The footage was also used by the Smithsonian Museum to educate members of the U.S. State Department about the situation at the ancient Buddhist archaeological site in Mes Aynak.

[36] Due to dangers of Taliban and opposition to the demolition of the archaeological excavation site, China Metallurgical Group Corp has delayed its mining operation in Mes Aynak.