Tia Lessin

Tia Lessin is an American documentary filmmaker. Lessin has produced and directed documentaries, earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary, three Emmy Awards, two primetime Emmy Nominations, the duPont Columbia Award, and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Documentary.

She directed the Emmy Award-winning film The Janes, with Emma Pildes, and is the director and producer, with Carl Deal, of Trouble the Water, Citizen Koch, and Steal This Story, Please!. She directed Behind the Labels and produced several of Michael Moore's films including Fahrenheit 9/11, Where to Invade Next and Fahrenheit 11/9.

Career Lessin is producer and director, together with Carl Deal, of the Academy Award-nominated feature documentary Trouble the Water, winner of the Gotham Independent Film Award and the Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize for best documentary.

She directed the HBO film The Janes with Emma Pildes and won three Emmys in the categories of Best Documentary, Outstanding Social Issue Documentary and Outstanding Direction, Documentary at the 44th News and Documentary Emmy Awards. The film also won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award's Silver Baton, which honors outstanding public service audio and video reporting in television, radio and digital journalism.

Lessin was a co-producer of Michael Moore's Where to Invade Next, Capitalism: A Love Story, Fahrenheit 9/11, winner of the Palme d'Or, and the supervising producer of Academy Award-winning Bowling for Columbine.

Lessin received the Sidney Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism for her documentary Behind the Labels. She line produced Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home: Bob Dylan and was consulting producer for his Living in the Material World: George Harrison. She began her career as associate producer of Charles Guggenheim's Oscar-nominated short film Shadows of Hate.

In television, Lessin's work as producer of the series The Awful Truth earned her two Emmy Award nominations and one arrest.

Lessin is a Sundance Institute Fellow, an Open Society Institute Katrina Media Fellow, a Creative Capital awardee and won the Women of Worth "Vision" Award by L’Oréal Paris and Women in Film.

Awards and recognitions

Winner, Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize (2024) Winner, Emmy Award, Best Documentary (2023) Nominee, Primetime Emmy Award for producer of Outstanding Non-Fiction Series, 2000–2001 Nominee, Primetime Emmy Award for producer of Outstanding Non-Fiction Series, 1998–1999 Creative Capital grantee Sundance Institute Fellow Open Society Institute Katrina Media Fellow

Filmography

Feature films and documentaries Steal This Story, Please! (2025), director The Janes (2022), director Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018), executive producer Where to Invade Next (2016), producer Citizen Koch (2013), director and producer Living in the Material World: George Harrison (2011), co-executive producer Capitalism: A Love Story (2009), co-producer Trouble the Water (2008), director and producer No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005), line producer Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), producer Bowling for Columbine (2002), supervising producer Behind the Labels (2002), producer and director The Big One (1997), coordinating producer Shadows of Hate (1995), associate producer

Television The Awful Truth (1999, 2000), producer TV Nation: Volume One & Two (1997), associate producer