Rebecca Sitney

Sky is a Professor of the Practice in the Film and Media Studies Program.

Rebecca Sitney

She directed the program for two consecutive terms from 2017-2023. She is also the co-founder and festival director of DC/DOX, a premier documentary film festival in Washington DC. She previously co-created and co-directed Double Exposure, a film festival and symposium dedicated to the intersection of documentary film and investigative journalism.


Sky is the former festival director of AFI Docs (previously known as Silverdocs) and is recognized as one of the key contributors in helping it become one of the leading documentary festivals in the United States. She ran the festival from 2005 until 2014.


Sky has held previous programming positions for the Newport International Film Festival and the New York Underground Film Festival and has also held industry positions at C-Hundred Film Corp. and Fine Line Features.


Sky has held numerous consultancy positions for a variety of film and media organizations, including SXSW, the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital, the MacArthur Foundation, Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Chicken & Egg Pictures, and the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC). Sky regularly serves on festival juries, panels, and award review committees, including the Gotham Awards, the Cinema Eye Honors, and the IDA Awards, and serves as a Chair for the Peabody nominating committee for Best Documentary.


Sky received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and an M.A. from New York University, where she is a doctoral candidate in their Cinema Studies Department. She is completing a dissertation on the subject of documentary film, sections of which have been published in the journal Grey Room and in the book Captured: A Lower East Side Film & Video History.