SONIA KENNEBECK

Sonia Kennebeck is an award-winning, Emmy-nominated director, writer, producer, journalist, and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her directing credits include critically-acclaimed feature films REALITY WINNER (SXSW), ENEMIES OF THE STATE (TIFF), and NATIONAL BIRD (Berlinale Special). Her work screened worldwide at major festivals and in theaters, and has been widely distributed by Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, PBS, ARD, New York Times Op-Docs, Comcast, and others. Kennebeck is a public speaker on AI in warfare, drones, whistleblowers, and misinformation.

Kennebeck received the 2026 Sundance Institute Alfred P. Sloan Science-in-Film Episodic Writing Prize, a 2025 Wim Wenders Grant for a new feature drama, a 2023 Chicken & Egg Award for directors, the Adrienne Shelly Excellence in Filmmaking Award, a Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize, and nominations for the Emmys, NAACP Image Awards, and Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards. Foreign Policy magazine recognized Kennebeck as one of 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2016. She was also selected as one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine and was on DOC NYC’s 40 under 40 list. Her work has been supported repeatedly by most major film funders, including Sundance Institute, Firelight Media, ITVS, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Reva & David Logan Foundation, Catapult Film Fund, International Documentary Association, Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film, Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, and Deutscher Filmförderfonds. She is sponsored by Canon and Avid. 

Kennebeck’s award-winning debut feature about the U.S. drone war, NATIONAL BIRD (executive produced by Wim Wenders and Errol Morris), premiered in the Special Section of the Berlin International Film Festival 2016, was broadcast on PBS and streamed on Netflix. Her documentary thriller ENEMIES OF THE STATE was one of 50 films in the official selection of the Toronto International Film Festival 2020. It was released by IFC Films in theaters and online, reaching top indie film and documentary in the iTunes charts before it was released on Hulu. ENEMIES OF THE STATE received outstanding reviews, including in the New York Times (Critic’s Pick) and Los Angeles Times. It is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and was nominated for Best Political Documentary of 2021 by Critics Choice Documentary Awards.

Kennebeck also directs and produces commercials, including a national spot for United Way Worldwide and Comcast, and an ad campaign for the United Nations, Tribeca, and Google/YouTube educating about U.N. Sustainable Development Goal Zero Hunger.

Her short film for New York Times Op-Docs, FROM JOURNALIST TO HOSTAGE, has been viewed 5.8 million times on YouTube. Her NAACP Image Awards-nominated short film DANIELLE SCOTT: ANCESTRAL CALL, co-directed with Tetiana Anderson for PBS and Firelight Media, is showing in museums and art galleries.

Kennebeck runs the production companies Starfield Media and Ten Forward Films and is currently developing a narrative series, a movie, and writing screenplays.

Before transitioning into film, Kennebeck worked as a broadcast journalist, directing eight television documentaries, more than 50 investigative reports, and countless news pieces for some of Germany’s most prestigious public television programs, including Tagesschau and Panorama. She is a first-generation college graduate, who worked full time while completing her master’s degree in international affairs at American University in Washington, D.C. Sonia Kennebeck was born in Malaysia, raised in Germany, is fully bilingual in English and German, and travels where her work takes her.