Shannon Kring became a documentary filmmaker as an extension of her humanitarian work. For the past two decades, she has served as an emissary between those left vulnerable and voiceless through years of systematic oppression and the people whose decisions directly impact them. She works with several governments, the White House, the United Nations, the US Department of Health and Human Services, the State Department, and other national and global bodies concerning the Indigenous and other marginalized members of society, environmental sustainability, animal welfare, human rights, and cultural preservation.
Shannon’s films have appeared on top networks and streamers worldwide, and have won dozens of awards including the Emmy Award, the Hollywood Critics Association Award, and the Clio Visualizing History Prize for the Advancement of Women in Film. They have been presented by numerous nations and by institutions including the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the Smithsonian, NASA, MIT, and the British Museum.
Between 2019 and 2025, under both the Trump and Biden Administrations, Shannon produced nearly 100 documentaries for the White House, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Community Services, and the Administration for Children and Families. In this capacity, she traveled across the US, covering topics as wide ranging as catastrophic flooding in Appalachia, anti-hunger efforts in Boston, a diaper distribution pilot project in rural South Carolina, water contamination in Alabama’s Black Belt, and a Houston OTR trucking company giving formerly incarcerated individuals a second chance at life. Under the Biden Administration, Shannon’s work expanded past filmmaking. Most notably, in 2022, she coordinated and moderated the historic listening session that for the first time brought together the federal government and tribal nations to discuss water and wastewater issues affecting Indian Country.
After living and working in places as diverse as Helsinki and San Pedro Sula, Honduras (then the Murder Capital of the World), Shannon returned to the US in 2016 to film END OF THE LINE: THE WOMEN OF STANDING ROCK. In 2018, she became the first US director and only third woman awarded backing by the Finnish Film Foundation in its then 69-year history. She also became a Rockefeller Foundation Grantee. In 2019, Shannon won the Stella Artois–Women in Film Finishing Fund Award. In 2021, she became a Film Independent Fellow. In 2022, she was producer on two of the six finalists for the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize, including on the co-winning documentary, PHILLY ON FIRE. The same year, Shannon was nominated for the Humanitas Prize for documentary screenwriting and the Emmy Award for Outstanding Social Justice Documentary.
Shannon’s latest productions are the 2026 documentary short GOOD BOY, about an undocumented dog walker who self-deports, and the forthcoming feature documentary NINE LITTLE INDIANS. Executive produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and Tony Robbins, it is the story of a family’s decades-long fight for acknowledgement, justice, and healing after the abuses they suffered in the American Indian boarding school system.
Shannon is the author of five nonfiction books. She has since 2015 served as Honduras’ Official Goodwill Ambassador.