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 (film)|Lost Boys of Sudan (film)|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
Cinematographer Credits

Awards