--- name: "Jon Shenk" canonical: "https://film.one/person/jon-shenk" fi1m_id: "jon-shenk" imdb_id: "nm0791556" tmdb_id: 933761 wikidata_id: "Q24661045" roles: ["Cinematographer","Director"] born: "1 January 1969" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 average_over: 0 updated: "2026-10-02T23:49:04.963972+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Jon Shenk ## Identity Jon Shenk - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/jon-shenk - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** jon-shenk - **IMDb ID:** nm0791556 - **TMDB ID:** 933761 - **Wikidata ID:** Q24661045 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Shenk, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24661045, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0791556/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/933761 Cinematographer and director. Born 1 January 1969 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. ## Details - **Work:** Cinematographer, Director - **Born:** 1 January 1969, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA - **Also known as:** Jonathan Shenk, Джон Шенк - **Academy Awards:** 1 Oscar nomination - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Shenk, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24661045, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0791556/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/933761 ## Streaming the US now - **Apple TV:** [*An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power*](https://film.one/film/an-inconvenient-sequel-truth-to-power.md) (58) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Jon Shenk > Jon Shenk shoots what he directs, and the shooting is the better half: he knows where to put a man beside a torrent of meltwater and how long to hold the shot. The directing, shared with Bonni Cohen, likes its subjects a little too much. In Greenland, in *An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power* (2017), Jon Shenk stands Al Gore beside a channel of meltwater the width of a road and lets it run. The water is grey and fast and heading for a hole in the ice, and the shot goes on long enough for the noise to make the case. That is his habit as a cameraman: find the thing, put a person next to it for scale, and do not cut. He does it again in Miami Beach, following Gore in waders down a flooded residential street on a cloudless afternoon. He is one of the documentary makers who shoots his own films, which is rarer than it sounds and explains how close the camera gets. He trained in documentary at Stanford after reading English at Yale, and co-founded Actual Films in San Francisco with Bonni Cohen around 1999. *Lost Boys of Sudan* (2003) was the first feature. *The Island President* (2011) followed Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives through the conferences where small countries are told to wait. Since the mid-2010s nearly everything has been made with Cohen: *Audrie & Daisy* (2016), the Gore film, *Athlete A* (2020), the short *Lead Me Home* (2021, with Pedro Kos), and *In Waves and War* and *The White House Effect*, both 2024. He still shoots for other directors, most recently *Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore* (2025), where he used several cameras at once so that signed conversation would not be cut in half. The method is observational: handheld, mobile, standing where the subject stands and staying out of the way. It depends on access, and access is what Shenk is good at, whether the subject is a president or the Paris climate conference, which gives the Gore film its one stretch of real tension. "In our minds, nothing is more dramatic than people who are up against high odds, trying to accomplish almost impossible things," he has said, and the films are built on that belief. It is also the weakness. A camera that admires its subject that much makes a film about the subject, and *An Inconvenient Sequel* is a film about Al Gore before it is a film about the climate. The best witness in it is the Republican mayor of Georgetown, Texas, who moved his town to wind and solar because it was cheaper, and Shenk and Cohen treat him as a curiosity rather than the point. We gave the film a mixed notice for that reason. And yet the Greenland sequence frightened us in a way the graphs of 2006 never did, because there was nothing to interpret: that was the ice, and it was going. The pictures did the work the film kept handing to its hero. Watch him for what he puts in front of the lens. The ice did not need anyone standing beside it, and his best shots know that. ## Biography Jon Shenk is an American documentary film director and cinematographer. He co-founded Actual Films with his wife Bonni Cohen, a documentary production company based in San Francisco. He trained in documentary filmmaking at Stanford University after earning a degree from Yale University. Shenk co-directed *An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power* (2017) with Cohen, for which he also served as cinematographer. His other directing credits include *Audrie & Daisy* (2016), *Athlete A* (2020) and *Lead Me Home* (2021). Earlier work includes *Lost Boys of Sudan* (2003) and *The Island President* (2011). Shenk has received an Emmy Award and an Academy Award nomination for his documentary work. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, actualfilms.net.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power* (2017), Fi1m 58, Director, Director of Photography, Cinematography — [page](https://film.one/film/an-inconvenient-sequel-truth-to-power.md) ## Complete filmography (30) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *The Coral Rescuers* (2026), Executive Producer, Director of Photography - *Art and Science Collide* (2025), Executive Producer - *Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore* (2025), Director of Photography - *Mercedes* (2025), Executive Producer - *Any Problem is No Problem* (2025), Executive Producer - *The White House Effect* (2024), Director, Producer - *In Waves and War* (2024), Producer, Director, Director of Photography - *Voices Rising: The Music of Wakanda Forever* (2023), series, Executive Producer, Camera Operator - *Make a Splash* (2022), Executive Producer - *Surf Nation* (2022), Executive Producer - *Lead Me Home* (2021), Cinematography, Director - *Athlete A* (2020), Director, Director of Photography - *Splash* (2019), Director - *Just Breathe* (2019), Executive Producer - *RUTH - Justice Ginsburg in her own Words* (2019), Director of Photography - *The Seer and the Unseen* (2019), Executive Producer - *Truth in Ten* (2017), Director - *An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power* (2017), Director, Director of Photography — Fi1m 58, [page](https://film.one/film/an-inconvenient-sequel-truth-to-power.md) - *Audrie & Daisy* (2016), Director, Director of Photography - *American Jerusalem: Jews and the Making of San Francisco* (2013), Executive Producer - *The Island President* (2012), Director, Director of Photography - *Nazi Mystery - Twins From Brazil* (2009), Director of Photography - *New Muslim Cool* (2009), Director of Photography - *Smile Pinki* (2008), Director of Photography - *The Rape of Europa* (2007), Producer - *Lost Boys of Sudan* (2003), Director, Producer - *From Puppets to Pixels: The Making of Star Wars Episode II* (2002), Producer, Director - *The Beginning: The Making of Star Wars Episode I* (2001), Director of Photography, Director - *Bird by Bird with Annie: A Film Portrait of Writer Anne Lamott* (1999), Assistant Camera - *History's Secrets: Atomic Bomb*, Additional Camera ## Gallery - ![Jon Shenk at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival during a panel discussion, "Ethics of Documentary".](https://film.one/media/person/4169910/gallery-f2a9fe2f165b.jpg) Jon Shenk at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival during a panel discussion, "Ethics of Documentary". — Kevin Payravi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/Jon_Shenk_at_the_2024_Telluride_Film_Festival.jpg/1280px-Jon_Shenk_at_the_2024_Telluride_Film_Festival.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Jon Shenk at the premiere of the 2011 film "The Island President" at the Toronto International Film Festival.](https://film.one/media/person/4169910/gallery-14e2eb29bcef.jpg) Jon Shenk at the premiere of the 2011 film "The Island President" at the Toronto International Film Festival. — The President's Office, Maldives, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Jon_Shenk_at_the_premiere_of_the_2011_film_%22The_Island_President%22_at_the_Toronto_International_Film_Festival.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) ## Awards ### Academy Awards — 0 won, 1 nominated - 2022: Best Documentary (Short Subject) (nominated), for *Lead Me Home* *From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.* --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/jon-shenk