Andrea Kalin

Andrea Kalin is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, immersive artist, and the founder of Spark Media, a company dedicated to producing programs with a social conscience. 

She has produced and directed 12 award-winning documentary features, dozens of shorts, and has worked in 25 countries, from disaster zones to remote tropical rainforests, crafting gripping human stories for the screen that forge a genuine emotional connection with audiences. Kalin’s storytelling has earned her more than 100 industry awards and honors, including a Primetime Emmy, a Gracie, and Golden Globe and WGA nominations.

Kalin collaborated with critically acclaimed director M. Night Shyamalan on an awareness-raising piece documenting the conflict in Syria, the world’s worst humanitarian emergency since WWII. Her feature documentary Scattering CJ premiered in fall 2022 on PBS' WORLD Channel and is the centerpiece of a national initiative on mental health and suicide prevention.

Kalin’s filmography also includes First Lady of the Revolution, which won 10 awards on the festival circuit, including best documentary feature and three Audience Choice Awards. The award-winning doc inspired the creation of EL 48, a genre-defining virtual reality experience exhibited at the National Museum of Costa Rica.

In 2014, Kalin released Red Lines, which takes a look at the Syrian conflict. She was one of the first U.S. filmmakers to cross that country’s border and capture the humanitarian disaster from inside. Red Lines was awarded Best Documentary at the Woodstock Film Festival, Most Disturbing Documentary at the Ramdam International Film Festival, the Humanitarian Award at the Tiburon International Film Festival, and was a top 20 audience pick at the Hot Docs Film Festival.

Kalin's debut documentary feature, Partners of the Heart, was named one of the National Endowment for the Humanities' 50 Best, aired on PBS' American Experience, and won the Erik Barnouw Award for Best History Documentary.

Kalin believes that her work reflects a common spark: to shine a light on relevant, diverse, and unexpected stories that become a part of who we are and how we see our world.