Jon Shenk


Jon Shenk is an and Oscar-nominated documentary film director and director of photography, known for his films Lead Me Home ''Athlete A, An Inconvenient Sequel, Audrie & Daisy,The Island President, Lost Boys of Sudan. He is the co-founder, with his wife Bonni Cohen, of Actual Films, a documentary film company based in San Francisco, CA. He co-directed and photographed Lead Me Home'' which premiered in 2021 at the Telluride Film Festival, was acquired by Netflix, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2022.

Career

Jon Shenk was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio where he graduated from Wyoming High School. He has a bachelor's degree from Yale University in English Literature and a master’s degree from Stanford University in documentary filmmaking. He has taught documentary filmmaking at University of California, Berkeley in the Graduate Documentary program.
Before founding Actual Films in 1999, he worked for Lucasfilm as the behind-the-scenes documentary filmmaker covering the making of Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace and directed the documentary The Beginning: Making Episode 1 . He was awarded the 2004 Independent Spirit Award for directing Lost Boys of Sudan  which was also short-listed for an Academy Award. Shenk also served as the director of photography for the 2008 Academy Award-winning Smile Pinki, and he won his first Emmy for Blame Somebody Else in 2007.
In 2011, Shenk directed The Island President, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and won the 2011 TIFF's People's Choice Award and The International Documentary Association's Pare Lorentz Award. In 2016, Jon co-directed and photographed Audrie & Daisy which premiered in competition at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, was acquired by Netflix, and won a Peabody Award. He co-directed and photographed An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power which premiered on opening night of the Sundance Film Festival in 2017, was shortlisted as Best Documentary Feature for the 2018 Oscars, and was nominated for a 2018 BAFTA for Best Documentary. With Bonni Cohen, he co-directed Athlete A which premiered at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, and won a Grierson Award for Best Sports Documentary and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Documentary in 2021.

Filmography

Directed Features
Producing Credits
  • Freedom to Dream
  • Jaiquan's Sketch
  • Cooking for Life
  • Sounds of Life
  • Be Like Water
  • Drawn to the Mat
  • Just Breathe
  • Nature: No App Required
  • Splash
  • The Seer and the Unseen
  • Melting Ice
  • Exposé: America's Investigative Reports
  • * Blame Somebody Else
  • The Rape of Europa
  • P.O.V.
  • * Lost Boys of Sudan
  • Lost Boys of Sudan
  • From Puppets to Pixels: Digital Characters in 'Episode II'
Cinematographer Credits
  • The White House Effect
  • Freedom to Dream
  • Athlete A
  • Sounds of Life
  • RUTH - Justice Ginsburg in her own Words
  • Just Breathe
  • An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
  • Audrie & Daisy
  • A Kind of Order
  • American Jerusalem: Jews and the Making of San Francisco
  • The Revolutionary Optimists
  • The Battle of Amfar
  • Eames: The Architect & The Painter
  • The Island President
  • The Burning Wigs of Sedition
  • National Geographic Explorer
  • * How Man Tamed the Wild
  • * Journey to an Alien Moon
  • * Nazi Mystery: Twins from Brazil
  • * Pyramids of Fire
  • Through the Wormhole
  • * Are We Alone?
  • Nourish: Food + Community
  • P.O.V.
  • * New Muslim Cool
  • Exposé: America's Investigative Reports
  • * The People's Sheriff
  • Smile Pinki
  • Undercover History
  • * J. Edgar Hoover
  • The Days and the Hours
  • Frontline
  • * A Hidden Life
  • The Rape of Europa
  • Secrets of Revelation
  • The Human Behavior Experiments
  • The New Heroes
  • * Power of Enterprise
  • Lost Boys of Sudan
  • Nova
  • * Runaway Universe
  • Frozen Fisherman
  • Kofi Annan: Eye of the Storm

    Awards

  • 2003 International Documentary Association Award Nominee, Feature Documentary, Lost Boys of Sudan, shared with Megan Mylan
  • 2004 Film Independent Spirit Award Winner, Truer Than Fiction, Lost Boys of Sudan, shared with Megan Mylan
  • 2005 News & Documentary Emmy Award Nominee, Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story - Long Form, P.O.V., Lost Boys of Sudan, shared with Sally Jo Fifer, Cara Mertes, Frances Reid, Megan Mylan
  • 2005 News & Documentary Emmy Award Nominee, Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Cinematography, P.O.V., Lost Boys of Sudan
  • 2006 News & Documentary Emmy Award Nominee, Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Cinematography, The New Heroes, shared with Banks Tarver and Mitch Wilson
  • 2007 News & Documentary Emmy Award Winner, Outstanding Feature Story in a News Magazine, AIR: America's Investigative Reports, shared with Tom Casciato, Scott Davis, Peter Nicks, Stephen Segaller
  • 2011 DOC NYC Nominee, Viewfinders Grand Jury Prize, The Island President
  • 2011 Toronto International Film Festival Award Winner, People's Choice Award Documentary, The Island President
  • 2012 International Documentary Association Award Winner, Pare Lorentz Award, The Island President, shared with Jon Else, Bonni Cohen, Richard Berge
  • 2016 Sundance Film Festival Nominee, Grand Jury Prize, Audrie & Daisy, shared with Bonni Cohen
  • 2017 Cannes Film Festival Nominee, Golden Eye, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, shared with Bonni Cohen
  • 2017 San Sebastián International Film Festival Award Winner, Greenpeace Lurra Award, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, shared with Bonni Cohen
  • 2018 British Academy of Film and Television Arts Nominee, Best Documentary, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, shared with Bonni Cohen
  • 2020 Critics' Choice Documentary Award Nominee, Best Director, Athlete A, shared with Bonni Cohen