Maureen A. Ryan
Maureen A. Ryan is a producer based in New York concentrating on narrative and documentary feature films. She is co-producer of James Marsh’s Man on Wire, a documentary about Philippe Petit, the wirewalker who stunned the world when he walked between the World Trade Center towers in 1974. It won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Documentary and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best British Film. She was co-producer on the feature documentary titled Dick Johnson Is Dead which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and won a Special Jury Prize for Innovation in Non-Fiction Storytelling and was broadcast on Netflix beginning in October 2020. The film won two Critics’ Choice Documentary awards, two IDA Documentary awards, and an EMMY award and was short-listed for the 2021 Academy Award for Best Documentary and the 2021 BAFTA for Best Documentary. It has also been nominated for four EMMYs, four Cinema Eye Honors, a PGA Award and an Independent Spirit award. She is a producer on Kirsten Johnson’s video art production to be installed at the new Los Angeles (LAX) terminal in 2026.
She is a consulting producer on an untitled upcoming feature documentary to be released in 2026. She was co-producer of Becoming, a documentary about Michelle Obama for Netflix that has been nominated for four 2020 EMMY awards. Another documentary titled Project NIM premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and won Best Director of World Cinema Documentary and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary that year. It screened theatrically in the US and UK and premiered on HBO and the BBC.
Ryan was the Production Advisor on the first season of Netflix's 10-part series Making a Murderer by Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi. She was Co-Executive Producer of the television pilot titled Stanistan for USA Network/Universal Cable Production that filmed in Santa Fe, NM. She was Advisor on The Penny Black, a documentary that premiered at the 2020 Slamdance Film Festival. Ryan was also the Re-Creations Producer for Johanna Hamilton's new feature documentary 1971 that premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival and screened this year theatrically and on PBS. It won the Cinema Eye Spotlight Award and the IDA-ABC VideoSource Award. Her other Re-creations credit includes Alex Gibney’s feature documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God. The film had a US theatrical run, screened on HBO, won the Peabody Award, the BFI Grierson Award at the London Film Festival and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary.
She was also a producer of the independent narrative film BOMBER, which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival, has won numerous film festival awards and is currently distributed by Film Movement in the U.S. and Distribuzione Indipendente in Italy. Written, directed and produced by Paul Cotter, it was shot in Brighton, UK and Bad Zwischenahn, Germany. She produced a short film Red Flag that was written and directed by Sheila Curran Dennin. The film won awards at the Palm Springs International Shorts Fest, the Woods Hole Film Festival and the Taos Shortz Film Festival. Ryan’s other producer credits include The Gates, Grey Gardens: From East Hampton to Broadway, The Team, The King, Torte Bluma, Last Hand Standing and Wisconsin Death Trip (which will be re-released in 2021).
Additional awards have included a Peabody award, three AICP awards, a Billboard award, a Freddie, a CMA award, an ACM award, 11 Addys and 5 Tellys. At Columbia University’s MFA film program, Ryan is a Professor of Professional Practice in the Creative Producing concentration. She holds an MFA (Film) from Columbia University School of the Arts and a BA (Economics) from Boston College. Ryan has taught film seminars in various U.S. cities and internationally in Amman, Jordan, Beijing, China, and Brussels, Belgium. She was a Fulbright Scholar when she taught in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Her latest book is the 3rd edition of Producer to Producer: A Step-by-Step Guide to Low Budget Independent Film Producing. Published by Michael Wiese Publishing, the book’s various editions have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, and Russian and is also available as an audiobook and library hardback. Ryan is also the author of Film & Video Budgets, 6th edition. The companion website is at www.ProducerToProducer.com.
Ryan is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), and Documentary Producers Alliance (DPA). She is a member of the Peabody Awards screening committee and a former longtime member of the Producers Guild of America (PGA).
Several projects by Columbia University filmmakers were honored during the 2021 Creative Arts Emmy Awards Ceremony that took place over the weekend.
Numerous projects helmed by Columbia University faculty and alumni have been nominated for the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards. They are: Dick Johnson Is Dead, The Social Dilemma, Lovecraft Country, Indian Matchmaking, and The Handmaid's Tale.
Three projects by Columbia filmmakers have been nominated for a Documentary Motion Picture Prize at this year’s PGA Awards.
Film alumnus Gregory Kershaw ’11, Associate Professor and Chair of the Creative Producing Concentration Maureen A. Ryan, and former staff member Lauren Domino have been recognized by the National Board of Review. Kershaw’s film The Truffle Hunters and Ryan’s film Dick Johnson is Dead were both finalists for Best Documentary 2020, and Domino’s film Time won in the same category.
Music’s biggest night will feature the works of many Columbia faculty and alumni.
Dick Johnson is Dead, co-produced by Associate Professor and Chair of the Creative Producing Concentration, Maureen A. Ryan was nominated for four Critics Choice Association Documentary Awards, winning Best Documentary Feature.
Feature Documentary, Dick Johnson is Dead, co-produced by Associate Professor and Chair of the Creative Producing Concentration, Maureen A. Ryan, and Adjunct Assistant Professor Marilyn Ness, assistant directed by alumnus Michael Toscano ’12, and with alumnus John Wakayama Carey ’14, as Director of Photography, and production managed by Adjunct Assistant Professor Sarah Seulki Oh, will have its premiere on Netflix on October 2, 2020.
Eight Columbia filmmakers were recently invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as part of an initiative to change its otherwise long-term white-male dominance.
It’s been a successful 35th edition of the Sundance Film Festival for Columbia filmmakers with three films taking home prestigious prizes.