Abby Ellis is a Peabody and Emmy nominated DIRECTOR WHOSE WORK SPANS DOCUMENTARY FEATURES, COMMERCIALS AND PREMIUM NONFICTION SERIES.

Her latest feature, The Lake, premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Documentary Competition where it won the Special Jury Award. Executive produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, it landed on Rolling Stone’s list of the 12 Best Movies at the festival. Sundance called it a film of “existential scope… wrought with divinity and doom,” and RogerEbert.com praised Ellis’s restraint,  comparing it to that of Frederick Wiseman.

Before moving into features, Ellis spent more than fifteen years in investigative documentary and nonfiction television, including America Divided — a premium documentary series executive produced by Norman Lear and Shonda Rhimes. She was the 2020 Hollyhock  Filmmaker-in-Residence at PBS where she wrote, directed and produced Flint’s Deadly Water, Shots Fired, and American Patriot. Ellis started her career at VICE, where she developed, produced, and edited some of the network’s defining work like Epicly Later'd, Tattoo Age, Munchies, and their flagship show, VICE on HBO. Her work has earned her a Peabody Award, multiple Emmy nominations, an Edward R. Murrow Award, a Scripps Howard Award, an Izzy Award, a Livingston Award, and other honors. In 2023, she was named to DOC NYC's 40 Under 40, recognizing the next generation of documentary filmmakers.

A member of the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association, Ellis frequently serves as a juror, moderator, and panelist for film festivals and funding organizations. She guest lectures at colleges and universities across the country and is an adjunct professor in the University of Utah's Film & Media Arts program. She is also an active member of Video Consortium, where she helped build a community-driven database tracking hiring practices and pay equity across the nonfiction industry.