The University of Texas at Austin, Master of Fine Arts, Radio-Television-Film
The Pennsylvania State University, Master of Science, Geography
Carleton College, Bachelor of Arts, Liberal Arts (Geology)

John Fiege is a film director, cinematographer, photographer, and podcaster whose work explores the cultural dimensions of ecological concerns, probing key questions at the heart of our global ecological crisis, including how art, activism, community, and culture are vitally linked to our ecological predicament. The animating question of his work is: how do we protect life on Earth and live peacefully with one another, across difference?

John Fiege’s award-winning films have played at Hot Docs, SXSW, Big Sky, MoMA, Cannes, and many other festivals, museums, universities, conferences, and community centers around the world, receiving distribution on Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, Sundance Now, and other platforms. He is a 2024/2025 recipient of a $75,000 National Endowment for the Humanities Media Projects Development Grant for his new film about consumption and waste in New York City. He has received numerous other fellowships, grants, and residencies, including from The Redford Center, Doc Society, University at Buffalo, United University Professions, Austin Film Society, Propel Capital, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Houston Endowment, Carleton College, Princess Grace Foundation, The University of Texas, University Film and Video Association, Kodak, and Smithsonian Institution.

Above All Else is his feature-length documentary about the Keystone XL pipeline that premiered at the SXSW Film Festival, with an international premiere at Hot Docs. The film won Best North American Documentary at the Global Visions Festival and a $5000 Special Jury Prize, the Silver Heart Award, at the Dallas International Film Festival. Mississippi Chicken, his intimate portrait of immigrants working in the poultry industry, premiered at the Miami International Film Festival, was nominated for a Gotham Award for “The Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You,” screened at the Museum of Modern Art, and was awarded the Grand Prize of the George H. Mitchell Award for Excellence in Graduate Research—the top prize for the year’s graduate dissertations and theses at The University of Texas at Austin.

His short documentary, Shoulders Deep, traces a young dancer’s experience of displacement from a hurricane, through dance, poetry, and performance. The film won Best Documentary Short at Dallas VideoFest’s DocuFest and Best Very Short Documentary at Angeles Doc Film Festival, and it was a finalist for the Eric Moe Award for Best Short on Sustainability at the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital. His short documentary, Slow Season, about a father and son’s memories of the BP oil spill, premiered at Austin Film Festival and screened in many coastal areas threatened by oil and gas exploration, as part of a Working Films
community screening tour, called Shore Stories. His 16mm short film, Bebe, won the Eastman Scholarship from Kodak and screened in a student showcase at the Cannes Film Festival.

Through his production company, Fiege Films, he works as a producer, director, cinematographer, and photographer on a wide range of projects, with clients that include The New York Times, MTV, PBS, CBS, Discovery Channel, Greenpeace, Environmental Defense Fund, Planned Parenthood, Whole Foods, Smuggler, SEIU, W. Alton Jones Foundation, and Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, among other companies and organizations. He photographed the Sundance documentary selection, No No: A Dockumentary, and has worked on many other feature documentaries, including Reversing Roe, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival. Other films he photographed have played at festivals worldwide, including Tribeca, Edinburgh, Clermont-Ferrand, San Francisco, LA, and True/False.

His still photography work has been published in a variety of magazines, books, and newspapers, including a feature article in Orion Magazine on his photographs of the resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline in East Texas. His I Will Vote project, which featured large scale photographic prints and a video installation of politically active young people in Texas, was exhibited in galleries in Austin and Houston.

He hosts Chrysalis, a podcast about transformation in the face of global ecological crisis. Through in-depth conversations with a remarkable group of environmental thinkers, he explores their paths through life and the transformations they’ve experienced along the way. He has recorded some of the shows live on stage in front of an audience, including a conversation with Lois Gibbs, the renowned Love Canal activist.

He holds a BA from Carleton College, an MS in cultural geography and environmental history from The Pennsylvania State University, and an MFA in film production from The University of Texas at Austin, where he also worked as a lecturer. He has given guest lectures at universities and festivals around the world, including as the Bernstein Visiting Scholar and Alumnus-in- Residence at Carleton College. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, and an affiliate of the Department of Environment and Sustainability.