Beth Levison

Beth Levison is an Academy Award-nominated American independent documentary film producer and director based in New York City. Previously, she had a career in unscripted television.

Life and career

Levison was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and went to Middlebury College.
Her most recently-completed producing effort, A Photographic Memory, won the 2025 Independent Spirits: Truer Than Fiction Award and was acquired for distribution by Kino Lorber. Previous to that, she produced The [Martha Mitchell Effect], about Watergate whistleblower and Republican cabinet wife Martha Mitchell, which premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, launched on Netflix, and was nominated for a 2023 Academy Award. Storm Lake, which she directed alongside DP Jerry Risius and also produced, premiered at the Full Frame [Documentary Film Festival], broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens in 2022, and was nominated for a Peabody Award and a 2022 News and [Documentary Emmy Awards|News and Documentary Emmy Award]. Her other producing credits include Women in Blue, News and Documentary Emmy-nominated Made in Boise, News and Documentary Emmy-nominated Personal Statement, and 32 Pills: My Sister’s Suicide.
Her executive producer credits include Land with No Rider, which premiered at the 2025 True/False Film Festival, the two-time British Independent Film Award winner Grand Theft Hamlet now streaming on MUBI, My Sweet Land and With Peter Bradley.
Levison is the founder of Hazel Pictures and the co-founder of the Documentary Producers Alliance. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, was producing faculty with the School of Visual Arts’ Social Documentary Film Program from 2014-2020, and currently teaches as guest faculty at Sarah Lawrence College.