Violet Du Feng is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker whose films provide nuanced, intimate and provocative perspectives to reflect on larger social issues.  Violet is a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow and serves as an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Journalism School. She has directed, produced and executive produced 15 documentaries featured in publications including New York Times, New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal and Vogue Magazine. Her latest directing credits include the acclaimed THE DATING GAME, which premiered at Sundance 2025 in World Cinema Documentary Competition; an Oscar®-shortlisted, Emmy® and Peabody nominated film HIDDEN LETTERS, which explores gender equality against politics, Capitalism and cultural influences through a fascinating lens of an ancient and secret women-only language from China. She directed the CPB/PBS special program HARBOR FROM THE HOLOCAUST with music performed by Yo-yo Ma, which tells the rarely known story of nearly 20,000 Jewish refugees who fled Nazi-occupied Europe during WII to Shanghai. 

She has directed, produced and executive produced 13 documentaries. Her producing credits include NIGHT OF NIGHTS (2024), which premiered in competition at CPH:DOX.DEAR MOTHER, I MEANT TO WRITE ABOUT DEATH (2022), which received a Special Mention at Busan International Film Festival; SINGING IN THE WILDERNESS (2021), nominee of Golden Alexander Award at Thessaloniki International Film Festival; CONFUCIAN DREAM (2019), winner of a Special Jury Award at Karlovy Vary International Festival and the Chinese Academy Award of Documentary Film; MAINELAND (2017), winner of a Special Jury Award at SXSW and PLEASE REMEMBER ME (2015), winner of three awards at GZDocs with a successfully theatrical release and impact campaign in China that resulted in policy changes. The film was awarded DocImpactHi5 of 2019. 

Violet started her career as a co-producer on the critically acclaimed 2007 Sundance Special Jury winner, Peabody and Emmy winner NANKING, which was distributed theatrically around 30 countries throughout the world, and was the highest grossing documentary in China. Violet is a consulting programmer for Shanghai International Film Festival. Born in Shanghai, and based in New York, Violet holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Fudan University and received her MFA in journalism from University of California at Berkeley.