NYWIFT Blog

By Jessica Moskowitz

Welcome to NYWIFT, Marianna Olinger!

Marianna is an artist, producer, strategist, and visionary who evaluates media projects for their potential impact on society and social change.

Marianna worked as lead impact producer for two Oscar-shortlisted documentaries, including The Territory (Sundance, Peabody, Emmy winner). As co-director at Earth Alliance, Marianna proclaims: ‘I am nature, and nature is in me.’

In our interview, she reflects on the pilot initiative, Indigenous Impact Alliance, through Doc Society’s Climate Story Unit, and her work as co-producer of the short documentary Sankofa.

Read on to learn about the work Marianna’s most excited to bring to life next.

NYWIFT Member Marianna Olinger

What brings you to NYWIFT?

As an impact producer and strategist, as well as an artist and producer, my work has always sat at the intersection of storytelling and social change. Finding community with others who share this approach is essential. I came to NYWIFT because it represents something really needed in our industry, an organization that champions women, not just through networking, but through genuine advocacy, professional development, and field-wide solidarity.

As someone rooted in New York for the past 12 years, and actively building initiatives to strengthen the impact media ecosystem, NYWIFT’s role as the city’s preeminent association for women in film and television felt like a natural home.

The organization’s commitment to supporting women at every stage of their careers, connecting filmmakers to resources and funding, and amplifying voices across the industry mirrors the work I do every day, and the community I’m trying to help grow.

At Big Sky FF Doc Shop Panel on collaborative work

What does being an Impact Strategist mean? Talk about the Indigenous Impact Alliance or any other project you’d like other artists and creators to know about this Spring.

Being an impact strategist means sitting at the intersection of storytelling and social change and asking, from the very beginning of a film’s life, ‘Who needs to see this, why does it matter, and what do we want to shift in the world as a result?’

It’s not about marketing a film after it’s made. It’s about building a strategy around the film’s purpose — identifying the communities, organizations, policy landscapes, and movements that a film can speak to and move, and then designing a distribution and engagement plan that connects the story to real-world action.

For me, it also means thinking about the field itself: how can the way we work become a model for something better? For any artist or creator thinking about their own work: the question I’d invite you to sit with is not just, ‘How do I get my film seen?’ — but, ‘What do I want my film to do?’ That’s where impact strategy begins.

One of the projects I’m most proud of this spring is the Indigenous Impact Alliance, a pilot initiative I served as impact strategist for through Doc Society‘s Climate Story Unit. The Alliance brought together five North American Indigenous-led documentary films to test a radical idea: instead of competing for the same audiences, press, and screening slots, what if films addressing shared issues worked together?

Over 12 months, we built a coordinated infrastructure that included pooled impact grants, shared distribution through the Kinema platform, a joint digital hub, coordinated publicity, and a collective screening tour, showing that the field doesn’t have to be built on competition; collaboration can be a strategy, and a powerful one.

Another project close to my heart this spring is Daughters of the Forest (2026), a documentary directed and produced by a women-led creative team, following two Indigenous women mycologists, whose deep generational connection to mushrooms becomes a lens through which they examine identity, culture, and the relationship between ancient tradition and modern science, set against the backdrop of deforestation threatening Mexico’s forests. As the magical qualities of mushrooms enter the mainstream, the film insists on centering a crucial element of their story that is being erased: Indigenous knowledge.

Daughters of the Forest premiered at SXSW, winning the Audience Award in the Visions category. The film is co-produced by Sandbox Films, a fellow New York-based production company and will have its New York premiere at the Margaret Mead Film Festival. As impact strategist on the film, I’m working to ensure this visually breathtaking and environmentally urgent story reaches the communities and movements it belongs to.

Another project I want artists and creators to know about this spring is War on Women, a bold and urgently needed documentary directed and produced by a woman who places herself at the very center of the story. What begins as a deeply personal reckoning, discovering her own mother’s allegiance to Estonia’s far-right party, becomes a global investigation into a coordinated international network dismantling gender rights and democracy under the guise of “traditional family values.”

The film exposes how a series of powerful think tanks have funneled hundreds of millions of euros to roll back women’s rights, reproductive autonomy, and LGBTQ+ freedoms across Europe, the US and beyond. The film is supported by New York-based Chicken & Egg Films and is targeting a late 2026/early 2027 release. As a consulting producer and impact strategist on this film, I’m working to ensure it reaches the audiences, policymakers, and movements that need it most.

Finally, the short documentary Sankofa (2025), which I co-produced, and is directed by New York-based filmmaker Anna Parisi. The film explores Black women’s relationships to their natural hair across the African diaspora — from Brazil and West Africa to the Islands and the United States. Through interviews with over 20 women, it weaves together stories of identity, beauty, resistance, and belonging, centering voices that deserve this kind of space and care on screen.

On May 5th, Sankofa was presented as part of the Soft Spaces exhibition at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, where was be on view through June 21st, in a convergence of documentary film and visual art, the kind of community-rooted premiere that reminds us why we make this work.

NYC Premiere of THE TERRITORY (photo by Leslye Davies)

How does nature inform your art?

Something I’m now able to articulate better than I have in the past, but has always been in me, that was part of my upbringing, is that first and foremost, I am nature, and nature is in me. This manifests in my art and professional projects as well. The more I learn about the way different ecosystems work, the more I see integration, collaboration, interdependence, which all inform my work, and show up profoundly through the stories and communities I am privileged to work with.

I’m particularly privileged to have been invited to work on a number of projects led by Indigenous peoples and communities who grew up living their ancestral values as nature in the last few years, and that has only consolidated the presence of nature in my life.

As a strategist, this thing we call nature, the incredible web of spaces and relationships that make our planet what it is, has taught me that the most resilient systems are the most interconnected, flexible, collaborative, and existing in balance with the other beings around. That is the model I bring to field building, to impact campaigns, and to the way I think about coalition and community.

Hiking in New Mexico with the Indigenous Impact Alliance cohort

Your work is global. Discuss any international filmmakers you are currently following and whom you might like to work with in the future.

I am always looking to connect with filmmakers, particularly women, with values aligned with my own, including deep love for what they do, respect and care for the communities and environments they work with. If that is you, I want to know your work.

On a more granular level, the line connecting everything I do is a belief that the most urgent stories are being told by filmmakers who are close to the ground, embedded in their communities, yet connecting with global dynamics and processes. My ongoing collaboration with organizations such as Doc Society, for example, has been central to how I stay connected to that international ecosystem, giving me relationships and visibility into filmmaking communities across the Americas, Africa, and Asia and beyond.

That international orientation also shapes my role as co-director of Earth Alliance, where one of the initiatives I am most excited about is an impact pitch we have recently launched in partnership with Jackson Wild — one of the most prestigious nature and wildlife film awards in the world. Filmmakers from anywhere working at the intersection of nature, environment, and social impact are eligible to apply. It combines funding with strategic communications support, helping filmmakers think about how their work can move audiences and shift systems. For international filmmakers telling environmental and nature stories who want to build a real impact campaign around their work, this is an opportunity worth looking at.

Connect with Marianna Olinger on LinkedIn, on Instagram at @marianna.olinger, and on her website mariannaolinger.com.

About Marianna Olinger:

Marianna Olinger works at the intersection of culture and community as an impact strategist and producer, researcher, artist, and organizer. As co-director at Earth Alliance and as an Impact Strategist with Doc Society and independently, she brings a systems-level lens to storytelling and movement work. Her practice centers on amplifying the knowledge, stories, and lived experiences of peoples and communities, nurturing relationships rooted in solidarity and care, and fostering human development in harmony with all species and the planet. Past impact strategy and production roles include: Oscars® shortlisted The Territory (Documist, Protozoa, Passion Films, Neo Geo Docs) and Yanuni (Malaika Pictures, Appian Way, Age of Union), How to Blow Up a Pipeline (Neon), Indigenous Impact Alliance (Doc Society), VsGoliath (Tikkun Olam), Climate in Therapy (B-Reel Films) and Daughters of the Forest (Sandbox Films, Oscura).

(All images courtesy of Marianna Olinger)