Lucy Walker is an Emmy-winning, twice Oscar-nominated director renowned for creating riveting character-driven nonfiction. Her films have won over 100 awards including two at Sundance and two at Berlin and include Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, Of Night and Light: The Story of Ibogaine, Bring Your Own Brigade, The Lion's Mouth Opens, The Crash Reel, The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, Waste Land, Countdown to Zero, Blindsight, and Devil's Playground. For Netflix she directed/executive produced How To Change Your Mind, executive produced Ram Dass, Going Home and produced Why Did You Kill Me?. She was born in London and graduated from Oxford University before winning a Fulbright Scholarship to attend NYU's Graduate Film Program, where she supported herself with a successful career as a DJ.

Longer Bio

Lucy Walker is an Emmy winning, two-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker who has been called “the new Errol Morris” by the Hollywood Reporter and has been singled out for creating “nonfiction fare that connects with audiences” by Variety. She is British and American and is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, The British Academy of Film and Television, the Director’s Guild of America, and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Her latest feature film is Mountain Queen (2024) about pioneering Nepali mountaineer Lhakpa Sherpa returning to Mount Everest to redeem her life’s purpose and inspire her own daughters. The film streams globally on Netflix. Bring Your Own Brigade (2021), a think piece about wild fires, was released theatrically by Paramount, streams on Paramount+ and CBSN, and was listed #5 in the New York Times’ Top 10 Best Movie of 2021, with A.O. Scott writing that “its open-mindedness, compassion and intellectual rigor provide a buffer against despair”. Other films include The Crash Reel (2013), which won an Emmy and the Cinema Eye for Best Broadcast Documentary and was shortlisted for an Oscar and nominated for a Gotham; Waste Land (2010), about artist Vik Muniz’s collaboration with the catadores who harvest recyclables from the largest garbage dump in the world in Rio de Janeiro, which was theatrically released by Arthouse and went on to be nominated for the Best Documentary Oscar and to win two IDA awards including Best Documentary; Countdown to Zero (2010), about nuclear weapons, which was in Official Selection at Cannes and was theatrically released by Magnolia and Participant; Blindsight (2006), about blind Everest submitter Erik Weihenmayer leading an expedition with blind students from Tibet, which won at Berlin and AFI and was Oscar-shortlisted; and Devil’s Playground (2002), about Amish teenagers and their rumspringa period of experimentation, which was nominated for three Emmys and the Independent Spirit for Best Documentary. Her films have won over one hundred festival awards including two at Sundance, two at SXSW, and she is the only filmmaker to have won the Audience Award at Berlin twice.

She has also made short films, notably Oscar-nominated and double-Emmy-nominated The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom (2011); triple-Emmy-nominated Oscar-shortlisted The Lion’s Mouth Opens (2014) which won the Cinema Eye for Best Short Documentary; and David Hockney In The Now (2012), commissioned and exhibited by LACMA. She was an early pioneer of VR and created several VR experiences including A History Of Cuban Dance (2015).

Series and television credits include directing twenty episodes of Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues for which she was nominated for two Emmys for Outstanding Directing, and Defying Gravity, about women’s gymnastics, directed and executive produced by Walker, which was Emmy-nominated and won a PGA Award for Best Sports series. Her advertising work has been honored with multiple Clios and Cannes Lions. Aside from projects which she has directed herself, she has executive produced Oscar-shortlisted Ram Dass, Going Home (2018), and produced Why Did You Kill Me? (2021), both Netflix Originals.

Walker is based in Venice, CA where she curates TEDxVeniceBeach. She grew up in London and read English Language and Literature at Oxford University, graduating with a starred first class BA Hons, MA Oxon. She directed award-winning theater before winning a Fulbright Scholarship to earn her MFA at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is an artist in residence at the SETI Institute and also enjoyed a successful career as a DJ.