Ian Cheney is an American documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and producer.^[1]

Cheney grew up in Massachusetts^[2] and Maine,^[3] attended The Mountain School, a semester school for high school juniors,^[4] and graduated from Milton Academy in 1998.^[2] Cheney received bachelor's and master's degrees from Yale University in 2002 and 2003.^[5]

He shared a Peabody Award in 2008 for King Corn, which he co-produced and starred in.^[6] In 2011, he and longtime collaborator Curt Ellis received the 17th Annual Heinz Award with special focus on the environment, becoming the youngest recipients to receive the Heinz Award.^[7] Cheney received an Emmy nomination in 2013 for his film The City Dark, which aired on PBS' POV.^[8]

Cheney's 2018 film, The Most Unknown, was released in theaters in May, then on Netflix in 25 languages in the summer,^[9] and finally posted in nine individual episodes in YouTube.^[10]

Cheney runs Wicked Delicate Films, a documentary film production company based in Maine.^[11] He is a co-founder and former member of the board of directors of the FoodCorps non-profit organization.^[12] He is the brother of poet Colin Cheney.^[13]

His most recent film The Long Coast premiered at a virtual version of the Camden International Film Festival in October 2020.^[14]

• King Corn (2007), Co-creator, Co-producer, Cinematographer, Writer
• The Greening of Southie (2009), Director, Editor^[15]
• Truck Farm (2011), Director^[16]
• The City Dark (2012), Director^[17]
• The Melungeons (2013), Director^[11]
• The Search for General Tso (2014), Director^[18]
• Bluespace (2015), Director  ^[19]
• The Smog of the Sea (2017), Director
• The Most Unknown (2018), Director ^[20]
• The Emoji Story (2019), Director  ^[21]
• Thirteen Ways (2019), Director ^[22]
• Picture a Scientist (2020), Director  ^[23]
• The Long Coast (2020), Director  ^[24]