Arianna LaPenne is a New Yorker who ended up in Los Angeles. Arianna got interested in documentary filmmaking because she asks too many questions. This turned out to be an excellent discipline to direct this sort of energy. 

Arianna is an Emmy-nominated and Edward R. Murrow award-winning filmmaker. Arianna’s latest is Glitter & Greed: The Lisa Frank Story for Amazon Prime, about the technicolor rise and fall of an iconic American brand. Arianna’s previous series, Lost Women of Highway 20, was a 3-part limited series she directed and produced, for MAX, executive produced by Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer and based on the Emmy award-winning investigative journalism of the Oregonian newspaper.

Arianna’s prior television directing credits include the Emmy-nominated Netflix doc series Connected: The Hidden Science of Everything, with host Latif Nasser of Radiolab, Emmy-nominated Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak, Emmy-nominated Season 2 of Waffles + Mochi, and Edward R. Murrow award-winning Unadopted on PBS. She also directed an episode of BBC’s Spectacular Earth, and two films for CNN Films, The Bunker Boom and Super Reviewers.

Arianna has directed and shot for The New York Times, National Geographic, Al Jazeera, and Viceland on issues ranging from child marriage, gang violence, to political conflicts around the world. Her work has taken her to more than fifty countries; directing crews in the sewers beneath London, to a locked down “clean room” at the NASA space center in Houston. She has embedded with female Kurdish soldiers fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq and documented the effects of Rhino breeding in South Africa for National Geographic.

Films Arianna has directed or DP’d have screened at SXSW, DOCFest, Tribeca, Hot Springs Doc Fest, DOC NYC, and PBS, and have been supported by the Sundance Labs, ITVS, IFP, and won a Peabody Award. Arianna was a Director of Photography for many years before pivoting to directing full time. She is represented by Creative Artists Agency.

Film & TV Representation: CAA Hannah Epstein: +1 615 383 8787

Commercial Representation: Gifted Youth: Josh Morse, NY & LA : +1 310 396 3400