Maureen A. Ryan Bio

Maureen A. Ryan is a producer based in New York concentrating on narrative and documentary feature films. She is the co-producer of James Marsh's Man on Wire, a documentary that won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Documentary and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best British Film. Her other co-producer credits include Dick Johnson Is Dead, which won the 2020 Sundance Special Jury Prize for Innovation in Non-Fiction Storytelling, garnered the top two 2020 Critics’ Choice Documentary awards for Best Picture and Best Director, a 2021 Emmy Award for Best Director (Documentary).

This year, Wisconsin Death Trip will be re-released for its 25th anniversary. Ryan is also a producer on Kirsten Johnson’s video art piece that will be installed on several video walls at the new Los Angeles Airport terminal due to open in 2026.

She also co-produced Becoming, which was nominated for four Emmy Awards, and Project Nim, which won the Sundance Best Director of World Cinema Documentary and was shortlisted for the 2011 Academy Award for Best Documentary. Ryan was co-executive producer of the USA Network’s television pilot Stanistan and the re-creations producer for Johanna Hamilton's feature 1971 and Alex Gibney's award-winning feature Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God. She was the production advisor on the first season of the Netflix series Making a Murderer. Her producer credits include Wisconsin Death Trip. The Gates, Red Flag, and Bomber.

She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and BAFTA. Ryan is a Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University's MFA Film program. She holds an MFA (Film) from Columbia University’s School of the Arts and a BA (Economics) from Boston College. She is the author of four books including the latest (third) edition of Producer to Producer: A Step-by-Step Guide to Low Budget Independent Film Producing and Film & Video Budgets, 6th Edition. The companion website for this book is at www.ProducerToProducer.com.