Ian Cheney

Ian Cheney is an American documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and producer.^[1]

Ian Cheney
Ian Cheney
Occupations	Director, producer

Early life and education

Cheney grew up in Massachusetts^[2] and Maine,^[3] attended The Mountain School, a semester school for high school juniors,^[4] and graduated from Milton Academy in 1998.^[2] Cheney received bachelor's and master's degrees from Yale University in 2002 and 2003.^[5] He received his Master of Fine Arts in Filmmaking from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2018.^[6]

Career

He shared a Peabody Award in 2008 for King Corn, which he co-produced and starred in.^[7] In 2011, he and longtime collaborator Curt Ellis received the 17th Annual Heinz Award with special focus on the environment, becoming the youngest recipients to receive the Heinz Award.^[8] Cheney received an Emmy nomination in 2013 for his film The City Dark, which aired on PBS' POV.^[9]

Cheney's 2018 film, The Most Unknown, was released in theaters in May, then on Netflix in 25 languages in the summer,^[10] and finally posted in nine individual episodes in YouTube.^[11]

Cheney runs Wicked Delicate Films, a documentary film production company based in Maine.^[12] He is a co-founder and former member of the board of directors of the FoodCorps non-profit organization.^[13] He is the brother of poet Colin Cheney.^[14]

His film The Long Coast premiered at a virtual version of the Camden International Film Festival in October 2020.^[15]

His most recent films include Picture a Scientist (2020), The Arc of Oblivion (2023), Shelf Life (2024) and Observer (2025). He has completed fourteen feature-length documentaries. ^[16]

Filmography

• King Corn (2007), Co-creator, Co-producer, Cinematographer, Writer
• The Greening of Southie (2009), Director, Editor^[17]
• Truck Farm (2011), Director^[18]
• The City Dark (2012), Director^[19]
• The Melungeons (2013), Director^[12]
• The Search for General Tso (2014), Director^[20]
• Bluespace (2015), Director  ^[21]
• The Smog of the Sea (2017), Director
• The Most Unknown (2018), Director ^[22]
• The Emoji Story (2019), Director  ^[23]
• Thirteen Ways (2019), Director ^[24]
• Picture a Scientist (2020), Director  ^[25]
• The Long Coast (2020), Director  ^[26]
• Postcards from Vershire (2021), Director  ^[27]
• The Arc of Oblivion (2023), Director  ^[28]
• Shelf Life (2024), Director  ^[29]
• Observer (2025), Director  ^[30]
• The Last Class (2025), Executive Producer  ^[31]