Alina Simone is an award-winning filmmaker and journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Guardian Long Read and Amazon Originals, among many others. She is the winner of a 2025 Cinema Eye Spotlight Award, the FACT Award for best investigative documentary (CPH:DOX) and the Sustainable Future Award (Sydney International Film Festival) for her debut documentary Black Snow (2024) which was executive produced by Erin Brockovich. Her work has been supported by Catapult Film Fund, Doc Society, IDA Enterprise Production Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Justice for Journalists Foundation, Chicken & Egg Films, Film Independent, Redford Center, NYC Women in Film Fund, Abigail Disney and Sara’s Wish Foundation. 

She is the author of three books, a novel and an essay collection both published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Madonnaland (University of Texas Press), a collection of music criticism that Rolling Stone named one of the top ten music books of the year. Her 2017 Village Voice article about America’s first K-pop cram school, “So You Want to be a K-pop Star,” has been optioned for film by 20th Century Fox. For 7 years, Alina was a regular contributor to PRX’s “The World,” an international news radio show. She has appeared on the Today Show, PBS NewsHour and RadioLab to discuss her work, and has taught the art of non-fiction writing at Yale University.

Alina is the recipient of a Logan Non-Fiction Fellowship, the Andrew Berends Film Fellowship, an NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, the MountainFilm Emerging Filmmaker Fellowship and the Cayton-Goldrich Family Foundation Fellowship (awarded by Film Independent).

Born in Soviet Ukraine and raised in Massachusetts, Alina currently lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.

A long time ago, she used to be an indie rock singer.