Rachel Lauren Mueller is an award-winning documentary director, journalist and cinematographer from the Colorado mountains and her films focus on themes of power, spirituality and rural life. She is a 2025 Film Independent Fellow and her latest film (currently in post-production) was shortlisted two years in a row for the Whicker Awards/Sheffield DocFest pitch, participated in the DOK Leipzig Co-Pro Market, and will pitch to impact organizations this spring at the Geneva International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights.

 

With her background in anthropology and investigative journalism, Rachel creates films that interrogate power structures while embracing expansive imagination. Her work has been featured in Al Jazeera, The New York Times and PBS and covers topics such as abuse cover-ups in juvenile detention centers, pagan white supremacist take-overs of small towns, and the repurposing of religious rites for queer people. Her work has been awarded by the Dart Center for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma, received the Reva and David Logan Prize for Investigative Reporting and was a finalist for a Livingston Award. As an organizer with the Video Consortium, Rachel works to support a thriving nonfiction filmmaking community in the Twin Cities.

 

Supporters of Rachel's films include Just Films | Ford Foundation, Film Independent, International Documentary Association, Rogovy Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, UnionDocs, IF/Then Shorts, among others. She has a Master’s of Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley. Rachel lives in Minneapolis where she attempts, in vain, to get her wisteria to bloom.