Lucy Walker

Roles: Director

Lucy Walker is best known for directing four feature documentary films: Devil’s Playground (2002), Blindsight(2006), Waste Land (2010) and Countdown to Zero (2010). Her most recent film is this short documentary The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom (2011), which premiered at Toronto 2011 and won the Polly Krakora Award for Artistry in Film, the Women In Film National Geographic All Roads Award and the Short Film Jury Award: Non-Fiction at Sundance 2012 as well as being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject. This is Walker’s second consecutive Oscar nomination.

In 2011 she was nominated for Best Documentary Feature for Waste Land, which won over 30 other awards including Audience Awards at Sundance and Berlin and the IDA’s Best Documentary Award. Four years earlier, Walker’s Blindsight had been among the fifteen films competing for the Academy Award nomination in the Best Documentary Feature category. Blindsight premiered at Toronto and won Audience Awards at Berlin (making Walker the only filmmaker to win this award twice), Ghent, AFI and Palm Spring film festivals and nominations for Best Documentary at the 2007 Grierson Awards and British Independent Film Awards. Countdown to Zero, about nuclear weapons, premiered at Sundance and played in Official Selection at Cannes. Devil’s Playground, an examination of the struggles of Amish teenagers during their period of experimentation (rumspringa), premiered at Sundance and also won several festivals and was nominated for three Emmys and an Independent Spirit Award.

Lucy grew up in London, England, and graduated with first class honors from Oxford before winning a Fulbright to attend NYU’s graduate film program. She was also a DJ and directed Nickelodeon’s BLUE’S CLUES, for which she was twice nominated for an Emmy.