Jessica Congdon is an award-winning film and commercial editor and director. Most recently, she edited HBO's When a Witness Recants, which premiered at Sundance 2026. She was an editor on the eight-part HBO series Eyes on the Prize, the third installment of the definitive Civil Rights series. She edited Amazon Prime's Power of a Dream, about the WNBA's political activism in 2020. She co-edited Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net, which premiered at DOC NYC. Before that came the four-part ESPN series 37 Words, on the history of Title IX. She edited the Apple TV+ mental-health docu-series The Me You Can't See, featuring Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry.
Her work includes The Way I See It, about President Obama's official photographer Pete Souza, directed by Dawn Porter and released by Focus Features in fall 2020. She also worked with Dawn Porter on John Lewis: Good Trouble, released by CNN Films. She co-wrote and edited the 2019 Peabody- and Emmy-winning Dolores, about Latina civil rights icon Dolores Huerta, with director Peter Bratt. The film premiered in the documentary competition at Sundance 2017 and was released by PBS's Independent Lens.
She produced, co-wrote and edited The Great American Lie, The Mask You Live In, and Miss Representation with Jennifer Siebel Newsom. The films premiered at Sundance in 2011 and 2015 and have screened in over 49 countries. Before that, she co-directed and edited Race to Nowhere with Vicki Abeles, about America's over-achievement education culture.
Other editing work includes Ahead of the Curve, directed by Jen Rainin; Speed and Angels and The Bronzer, directed by Peyton Wilson; Motherland and Desert Runners by Jennifer Steinman; the narrative feature Big Girls Don't Cry, directed by Maria von Heland and distributed by Columbia TriStar; and the Sundance 2003 award-winner Dopamine, directed by Mark Decena and distributed by Sundance Films.
She directed the short documentary Empire on Main Street, which won the audience and jury awards for best documentary short at the Sonoma International Film Festival in 2018, was an official selection at 21 film festivals nationally and internationally, and won best documentary at the American Pavilion at Cannes.
Other directing work includes commercial campaigns for Google and eBates, along with the food-and-travel documentary series Lost in Taste. Jessica was a founding member of Umlaut Films in San Francisco, and her work has received AICE editing awards, a One Show Award, and Cannes Lions honors.