About

Arianna La Penne 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 a new limited series she directed and produced, airing on MAX this fall, 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 documentary 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. Recently she also directed an episode of Spectacular Earth, a BBC Science series about Earth's greatest natural phenomena, and two short films for CNN Films, The Bunker Boom and Super Reviewers, about unexpected American subcultures.

Arianna has also directed and shot Emmy-nominated and Edward R. Murrow award-winning work 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 she 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. Brands Arianna has directed commercials for include: Google, Ford, Dannon, West Elm, Bulleit Whiskey, and Tillamook. Arianna was a Director of Photography for many years before pivoting to directing full time. Arianna is represented by Creative Artists Agency.

Arianna on Free The Work

PRESS:

Hollywood Reporter article about new series exec produced by Octavia Spencer

Listen to an interview with Arianna by No Film School here.