Katie Mathews is an award-winning film director, writer, & producer. She works across documentary and fiction and her films explore the intersections of identity and culture in our complex world.

She is currently directing the feature documentary Roleplay about a group of college students who use theater to confront campus rape culture that is having its World Premiere in Competition at SXSW. Recently she wrote and directed the narrative short Dark Moon about a father-daughter relationship faced with Dementia chosen as a Vimeo Staff Pick and co-directed an audio-first experimental film called Signal and Noise about the sounds of Guantánamo Bay Detention Center, winner of a Special Jury Prize at the New Orleans Film Festival. Previously she produced and story edited Mossville, a feature documentary about environmental racism that won Human Rights awards at festivals around the world and screened for the United Nations. She also directed and produced Post Coastal, an NEA and Smithsonian-funded documentary series about Louisiana coastal communities and climate change.

She received the prestigious Princess Grace Award for Film in 2022 with the Wendy Ferguson Honor for distinction. She has been a fellow in renowned programs such as the Gotham Documentary Lab (2021), the Points North Fellowship and Pitch (2019), and the New Orleans Film Society's Southern Producers Lab (2018). She holds a BA in Communications from Northwestern University and recently completed her MFA in Integrated Media Arts from CUNY-Hunter College. ​

Katie also directs and produces purpose-driven branded documentary and commercial work for brands like Labcorp, Moen, and Ronald McDonald House Charities, building upon her prior experience delighting clients as a strategist, researcher and storyteller at global design firm IDEO. She is passionate about bringing important stories to global audiences and her work has been published by Teen Vogue, Architectural Digest and Wired, broadcast by PBS, Hulu, the CBC, National Geographic and Disney+.