Devil's Playground, Walker's first feature documentary, examined the struggles of Amish teenagers during their period of experimentation (rumspringa). It premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.
Blindsight premiered at Toronto. It follows the journey of six blind Tibetan teenagers who climb up the north side of Mount Everest with blind American mountaineer Erik Weihenmayer and their teacher, Sabriye Tenberken, who founded the only school for the blind in Tibet, Braille Without Borders. Blindsight won the Audience Award at Berlin Film Festival, as did Walker's subsequent film Waste Land.
Waste Land focuses on Brazilian artist Vik Muniz and a group of catadores—pickers of recyclable materials—who transform recyclable materials from the world's largest dump in Rio de Janeiro into contemporary art sold at the most prestigious auction house in London. Waste Land premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival where it won the World Cinema Audience Award in documentary. Waste Land was released theatrically in the US by Arthouse Films, in Canada, in the UK by E1 Entertainment, and in Australia/NZ by Hopscotch Films. In addition to being nominated for an Academy Award, Waste Land won the top prize at the 2010 IDA Documentary Awards. [1]
Countdown to Zero, an exposé of the present-day threat of nuclear proliferation, also premiered at Sundance 2010. It also played in the Official Selection at Cannes Film Festival, before being released in the US by Magnolia Pictures, in the UK by Dogwoof, and in Japan by Paramount.
Walker's 2014 documentary The Lion's Mouth Opens focuses on filmmaker-actor Marianna Palka's attempt to discover if she has inherited Huntington's disease, the incurable degenerative disorder that took Palka's father. Nick Higgins worked with Walker as cinematographer for the documentary. Walker premiered The Lion's Mouth Opens at Sundance on 26 January 2014 and it went on to win Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Short Filmmaking at the Cinema Eye Honors.
Walker's credits in television include directing over a dozen episodes of Nickelodeon's Blue's Clues, her first job out of film school, for which she was twice nominated for Emmy Awards for Outstanding Directing. Her content and commercial work includes directing "Project Daniel" for Intel, which was awarded an AICP Curator's Award and three Bronze Lions at the Cannes Festival of Creativity[13]
Walker was named one of the "Top 25 New Faces in Independent Film" by Filmmaker and called "the new Errol Morris" by The Hollywood Reporter. Variety has profiled her as a notable "Femme Filmmaker", praising her ability to connect with audiences.[14]
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