Biography

Stephanie Mechura has been editing documentary films for more than 25 years, teaming up with storytellers who share a simple ideal: a powerful film can change our world for the better.

Mechura's career began at Winton DuPont Films in San Francisco, where she fell in love with long-form documentary film editing under the tutelage of long-time President of the San Francisco Film Society, David Winton. During her tenure at WdF, Stephanie witnessed the potential documentary films have for creating social change, editing specials for PBS, and multi-part series for National Geographic. She went on to become a staff editor with Lucasfilm, Ltd. in George Lucas' Documentary Unit at Skywalker Ranch, editing dozens of historical documentaries which aspired to tell stories from the past as a lens through which we might examine events of the present day.

A freelance editor ever since, Stephanie's feature-length docs have premiered at Sundance, Telluride, DOC NYC, Human Rights Watch and others, including the European Independent Film Festival. Her films have appeared on multiple broadcast specials and series, most notably PBS Frontline, American Experience and Independent Lens, Amazon Prime and Apple+, and The New York Times OpDocs. Stephanie's Emmy-nominated films have received many of journalism's highest awards, including the DuPont Columbia Award, the Nestor Almendros Award for Courage in Filmmaking, and the Daniel Pearl Award for Excellence in Journalism. Through her close affiliations with the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, Stephanie works alongside the world's most dedicated journalists and filmmakers, shining a light on the pressing stories of our times.

Stephanie lives in Oakland, California and splits her time between Northern California and Paris, France.
- IMDb mini biography by: Stephanie Mechura