Creative Director
Kevin McMahon is a writer, director and producer who has spent four decades making documentaries about the human relationship to our environment.
He has explored that theme through subjects as varied as toxins in Niagara Falls, the cod fishery collapse, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and many aspects of climate change. He has collaborated with Indigenous communities across Canada, in the lands of the Inuit, Haida, Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and Cree. Known for bringing unusual perspectives and personalities to documentary, McMahon has worked with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, rock legend Gord Downie, performance artist Laurie Anderson, comedian Mary Walsh, actor and director Sarah Polley and iconic newsman Peter Mansbridge. He has filmed in some of the world's wildest places, including the Sahara Desert, the Galapagos Islands, the north Atlantic Ocean and the high Arctic.
McMahon's films have been screened worldwide in film festivals from Traverse City to Tokyo and honoured with dozens of awards, including the Earth Prize from the Tokyo Film Festival, the Canadian Eco Hero Award from the Planet in Focus film festival, a Webby Award, the Hot Docs Special Jury Prize (Canadian Feature) and the Rob Stewart Award for Best Science or Nature Documentary Program from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television (Borealis, 2022).
McMahon's most recent feature documentary, The Birdman of Cooper Island, debuted at the Planet in Focus festival in 2024 and won the Rob Stewart Award for Best Science or Nature Documentary Program at the Canadian Screen Awards (2026). Other recent productions include the multi-award-winning 2020 documentary Borealis, a co-production with the National Film Board of Canada in partnership with TVO, NHK and ARTE/ZDF; Viral News, a feature about journalism during the pandemic; and the CSA-nominated Arctic Blue, about the impact on Nunavut of an ice-free Arctic Ocean. As a producer and showrunner, McMahon was the creative force behind the 10-hour television series The Polar Sea and the 12-hour series Equator: A New World View.
