Miller-Derstine (director/producer) is an award-winning documentary filmmaker drawn to stories centering joy as resilience. She holds an MFA in documentary film from Wake Forest University and is an assistant professor of visual and communication arts at Eastern Mennonite University. She approaches all her work with a deep commitment to ethical storytelling and an awareness of the extractive history of the documentary field.

 

Her most recent short documentary Once Upon the Wetland (2025) has received Oscar qualification in the Short Documentary category and won Best Documentary at Beyond: The Cary Film Festival. Her other notable work includes Bloom (2024), which has been acquired for educational distribution by Good Docs, and won Best Documentary at the Longleaf Film Festival, and Welcome to the Dollhouse (2020), which won Best Director at both the Atlanta DocuFest and Hoosier Films Festival.

 

I believe media impacts the way we relate to our world. Let’s use it to make something beautiful, spark conversation, and provoke change