Hanna Lane Miller is a documentary filmmaker from Collins, Mississippi, whose work explores the tensions of home, identity, contradiction, and belonging in the American South. Growing up leftist in a conservative, rural town, Hanna has long lived between worlds—worlds she now seeks to reconcile and make visible through film.
Her short films have screened internationally and been supported by The New York Times, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Rolling Stone, POV, and Independent Lens. Her Op-Doc We Became Fragments was considered for an Academy Award nomination, received an IDA nomination, and won Best Documentary at the LA International Shorts Film Festival. In 2020, she was awarded Best Cinematography at the Georgia Shorts Film Festival, and in 2021 she won an Edward R. Murrow Award in the news documentary category for her editing.
Hanna graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from Sewanee: The University of the South, where she studied Russian, American Studies, and Women’s Studies. She later spent a Fulbright year in Russia conducting oral history research on grandmothers as cultural bearers before earning her master’s degree from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.
She is currently directing her first feature-length documentary, Mississippi Mercedes, which will premiere in 2026. The film is supported by the Bay Area Video Coalition’s MediaMaker Fellowship, the Mississippi Arts Commission, and others. Across her work, Hanna brings a deep commitment to Southern stories and to toppling elite power by bridging divides through curiosity, honesty, and care.
