Ben Knight

Ben Knight grew up in rural North Carolina and left home at 17. Knight pointed his camera and a reasonably reliable Oldsmobile due west in 1996 and spent 28 years in Colorado, 19 of them in Telluride, where an annual film festival called Mountainfilm inspired him to leave photojournalism for filmmaking. Now 47, Knight has won more than 70 film festival awards for shorts and features, and was nominated for National Geographic’s Adventurer of the Year for his 2014 documentary DamNation (Mountainfilm 2014). Knight is the director of Best Day Ever (Mountainfilm 2026), alongside co-director Berne Broudy, and the co-director of Teeth to the Wind (Mountainfilm 2026), alongside Drew Smith. Additionally, his Mountainfilm films also include Red Gold (Mountainfilm 2008), Running Down the Man (Mountainfilm 2013) and the viral hit Denali(Mountainfilm 2015). Knight and his producing partner Travis Rummel run Felt Soul Media. Together, Rummel and Knight made Senior: 82 Winters in Telluride and Kamchatka Steelhead Project (both Mountainfilm 2016), The Last Honey Hunter (Mountainfilm 2017), Katie (Mountainfilm 2018), Life of Pie (Mountainfilm 2019), Learning to Drown (Mountainfilm 2022) and Mirasol, Looking at the Sun (Mountainfilm 2024). The Last Honey Hunter qualified for a Short Documentary Oscar, and Learning to Drown premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.