Dawn Porter

Dawn Porter is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has appeared on ESPN, Netflix, HBO, PBS, and Discovery. Her latest film, Luther: Never Too Much, premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where it earned accolades from critics and audiences alike. In 2023, Dawn directed The Lady Bird Diaries, which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival. The groundbreaking, all-archival documentary about Lady Bird Johnson reveals a complex portrait of one of the most influential and least understood First Ladies. Later in the year, her docuseries Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court premiered on Showtime and Paramount+, and would later be named among the 17th Television Academy Honors.

Porter's four-part ESPN documentary series 37 Words premiered in June 2022 and examines landmark civil rights legislation that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any educational institution that receives federal funding, and gave women the equal opportunity to play sports. In 2021, Dawn directed and executive produced The Me You Can't See, an Apple TV multi-part documentary series with Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry that focuses on mental illness and mental well-being. A two-time Sundance festival Director, her film Trapped which explored laws regulating abortion clinics in the South won the special jury social-impact prize at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, in addition to a Peabody and numerous other awards.

Her 2013 documentary Gideon's Army premiered on HBO and won best editing at Sundance. Gideon's Army was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy, and is part of the U.S. Department of State's American Film Showcase. Her work has received generous support from the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, Tribeca Film Institute, Sundance Film Institute, Chicken & Egg Pictures and other esteemed organizations. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Directors Guild of America.

updated 8.9.24