Ben Proudfoot

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Proudfoot is of Scottish and Dutch heritage. His maternal grandmother was a member of the Dutch resistance.^[3] He was born to an attorney father and sociologist mother. As a teenager, he excelled as a sleight-of-hand magician, winning several Canadian and international titles in magic competitions and was the first international member of The Magic Castle Junior Program in Los Angeles.^[4]

Later, he moved to Los Angeles as an undeclared USC student and would eventually attend film school as a Critical Studies student at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.^[5] In 2011, he made his first short documentary for a class project, ink&paper, a nine-minute film about side-by-side letterpress and paper shops fighting to survive in Downtown LA. The film gained popularity on Vimeo and became a Vimeo Staff Pick.^[6]

In 2012, Proudfoot founded the production company Breakwater Studios focused on producing short documentaries. The company, named after the protective seawall Proudfoot and his father built on the south shore of Nova Scotia when he was 12,^[5] was opened in the same Los Feliz neighborhood building the original Disney Bros Studios was founded in 1923.^[5]

From 2011 to 2019, Proudfoot produced and directed a number of other films including live action short film Dinner with Fred, and short documentaries The Ox, Life's Work: Six Conversations with Makers and That's My Jazz which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2019 and features Milton Abel Jr., the former head pastry chef of Michelin-star restaurant The French Laundry.^[7]

From 2019 to 2022, a watershed partnership between Breakwater Studios and The New York Times produced some sixteen films, including A Concerto is a Conversation, which was executive produced by Ava DuVernay and nominated for Best Documentary Short Subject at the 93rd Academy Awards,^[8] and The Queen of Basketball, which won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject at the 94th Academy Awards.^[9] The film was executive produced by Shaquille O’Neal and Stephen Curry and made history as the first Oscar win for The New York Times.^[1] The film was one of eight films directed by Proudfoot as part of the Almost Famous anthology series profiling figures adjacent to history.^[10] The series was released on the New York Times website and YouTube as part of the Op-Docs slate.

Other notable films in the Almost Famous series include The Silent Pulse of the Universe, a film about astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell, whose instrumental role in the discovery of pulsars was not recognized when the Nobel Prize went to her professors Antony Hewish and Martin Ryle,^[11] and The First Report, which features Jason Berry, the Louisiana reporter who broke the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal in the 1980s before it gained traction.^[12] The Boston Globe covered the story in 2002, receiving a Pulitzer Prize and inspiring the Academy Award-winning feature film Spotlight. Kim I Am features Kim Hill, the original singer of the Black Eyed Peas who quit the band in 2000^[13].The Lost Astronaut features Ed Dwight, the first would-be black American astronaut whose rise in NASA was thwarted due to alleged prejudice.^[14]

In 2020, Proudfoot produced a second series with The New York Times titled Cause of Life.^[15] The series celebrates the lives of five people lost to COVID-19, and was nominated for an Emmy Award at the 42nd News and Documentary Emmy Awards.

In 2022, Proudfoot directed and produced two more films released by The New York Times. MINK! tells the story of Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color elected to the U.S. Congress and who helped author the pivotal Title IX law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in education. The film was executive produced by Naomi Osaka and was nominated for Outstanding Short Documentary at the 44th News and Documentary Emmy Awards. Also released in 2022, The Best Chef in the World told the story of Sally Schmidt, the original owner and cook of The French Laundry before it became the Michelin-star restaurant run by celebrity chef Thomas Keller.

On March 10, 2024, Proudfoot became the first person born in the 1990s to win a second Academy Award,^[16] this time for The Last Repair Shop, his second collaboration with composer and filmmaker Kris Bowers and the first Oscar for [[Los Angeles Times|The Los Angeles Times]].^[2] The film was distributed by Searchlight Pictures, an arm of The Walt Disney Company.

In 2024, ESPN Films partnered to release Breakwater’s short documentary film Motorcycle Mary that features Mary McGee, the first woman to race motorcycles in U.S. history. The film was directed by Haley Watson and produced by Rachel Greenwald while Proudfoot and seven-time Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton served as executive producers.^[17]

In 2024, Netflix acquired The Turnaround, Breakwater’s short documentary about Jon McCann, a devoted Philadelphia Phillies fan who helped spark a standing ovation for struggling shortstop Trea Turner. The film was directed by Kyle Thrash. Proudfoot served as co-director and producer. The film was produced in partnership with Major League Baseball, Dick’s Sporting Goods’ Cookie Jar and A Dream Studios, and Barack and Michelle Obama-led Higher Ground Media.^[18]

In 2025, Proudfoot's The Eyes of Ghana world premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. Executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, the documentary feature film spotlights Chris Tsui Hesse, the 93-year-old forgotten personal cinematographer of revolutionary African leader Kwame Nkrumah.^[19]

In 2020, Proudfoot was named one of Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 for his leadership and innovation in the documentary space.

In 2023, Proudfoot was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee Medal by the government of Nova Scotia.