Ilse Fernandez

Ilse Fernandez (Director/Producer) is a Colombian-born U.S. immigrant, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and docuseries showrunner with over 20 years of experience telling powerful, socially charged stories. She has produced and directed over 200 hours of groundbreaking nonfiction and long-form documentaries for ABC, NBC, Vice, MTV, Netflix, Discovery, A&E, National Geographic and The History Channel. Ilse began tackling pressing social issues via documentary as a director and story producer on five seasons of A&E’s Intervention series, including the 2009 Emmy Award-winning season. Her powerful episode Rachel earned both an Emmy and Producers Guild Award nomination. As showrunner on Viceland’s cutting-edge eight-part documentary series Cyberwar, she tackled global digital conflicts, from NSA whistleblowers to Anonymous hackers. On Spotify's Music Happens Here documentary series, she served as both director and showrunner, crafting innovative ways to bring diverse music genres—from Pink Floyd to A$AP Mob—to life. The series earned three Clio Awards. In 2018, she founded Viva Vida Productions, focusing exclusively on documentary films and non-fiction content. She is a 2021 Logan Non-Fiction Fellow and recipient of the 2021 IDA Logan Elevate Grant, 2019 SFFilm/Catapult Documentary Fellow, and received both the 2019 LPB Current Issues Fund and 2020 LPB Public Media Content Fund grants. Exodus Stories marks her bold debut as a feature documentary filmmaker, and she’s also executive producing a podcast series by the same name, part of a larger, multi-platform impact strategy.