Director & Producer
David Fedele is an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker whose work has taken him from the mountains of northern Morocco to the e-waste dump sites of Ghana, and deep into the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. His films explore the human stories behind some of the world’s most pressing issues – refugee migration, environmental destruction, and the consequences of global consumption – always from the inside, and always independently produced and self-funded.
His trilogy of films documenting refugee migration between Africa and Europe – The Land Between (2014), Revenir (To Return) (2017), and This Jungo Life (2024) – has established him as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary documentary filmmaking. Each film takes a different approach to the same fundamental question: what does it mean to be forced to leave everything behind in search of a better life?
In Papua New Guinea, Fedele documented the devastating human cost of illegal logging and deforestation in Bikpela Bagarap (Big Damage) (2011), and the afterlife of electronic waste in Ghana in E-WASTELAND (2012). While filming in Sandaun Province, near the West Papua border, he became the first filmmaker to reach the scene of Operation Sunset Merona – a joint Papua New Guinea Police and Defence Force operation that had burned West Papuan refugee villages three weeks earlier. The footage he captured showed West Papuan refugees emerging from hiding in the jungle, and women who had been held captive slipping away briefly under the pretence of looking for food. The footage provided clear evidence of contraventions of the UN Charter for Refugees by Papua New Guinea, and raised serious questions about the alleged involvement of the Indonesian Government in pressuring PNG authorities to carry out the raids.
His films have screened widely around the world, including at the European Parliament in Brussels, and have won numerous international awards across human rights, environmental, and documentary film festivals on six continents. In 2014 he was selected to participate in Berlinale Talents as part of the Berlin International Film Festival.
Fedele works predominantly alone – self-producing, self-directing, and self-funding his projects outside the conventional film industry. He self-distributes his films with a focus on grassroots and community screenings. Alongside his film work, Fedele is also a composer and musician. His music is cinematic and contemplative in nature, combining intimate piano with soft electronics and orchestral elements to create lush soundscapes that blur the boundaries between ambient, electronic and neoclassical music.
All of David Fedele’s films available through Dancing Turtle – The Land Between, Revenir, Bikpela Bagarap, E-WASTELAND, and This Jungo Life – are available to purchase as DVD or HD stream through our online store.