Sara Newens is an award-winning director, producer, and editor whose documentaries and narrative films have premiered at top international festivals including Sundance, IDFA, SXSW, and Telluride.
She gained significant recognition as an editor, earning a 2023 Primetime Emmy nomination for her work on Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields (Hulu), which premiered at Sundance and won a Cinema Eye Honors award for Best Broadcast Editing. She also won an Emmy for her work on the Olympics and was previously recognized for her editing on Allen v. Farrow (HBO), which received seven Emmy nominations along with nods from the Cinema Eye Honors and American Cinema Editors (ACE) Eddie Awards.
As a director, Sara most recently collaborated with Mina T. Son on the documentary feature Racist Trees, which investigates a racially charged community dispute in Palm Springs and was acquired by PBS’s Independent Lens. The pair's directorial debut, Top Spin, followed three young table tennis players on their journey to the Olympics and was released theatrically to great acclaim after premiering at DOC NYC. She also directed Footprint: Where the Towers Stood, a New York Times Op-Docs short offering a poetic reflection on Ground Zero’s transformation.
Most recently, she edited Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, which premiered at Sundance 2025, and co-edited The White House Effect, an upcoming Netflix documentary exploring climate change policy history.
A graduate of Stanford University’s MFA Documentary Film Program, Sara has served as a mentor for the Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship and Film Independent’s Documentary Lab. She is based in LA and continues to create original work through her production company Wild Pair Films.