Mitch McCabe is an artist, filmmaker, and educator whose film work spans narrative and nonfiction film, and the many areas in between.
McCabe is a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow. Their most recent film, 23 MILE, made its world premiere at the 2024 True/False Film Festival and screened at Margaret Mead Film Festival at New York's American History Museum. It made its international premiere at the prestigious Docukuest, where it won the TruthDocs award. Their project Civll War Surveillance Poems was a Finalist for the 2025 Creative Capital Award.
Their short films Playing the Part, September 5:10pm, Highway 403, Mile 39, To Whom It May Concern, and Civll War Surveillance Poems (Part 1) and You Have Been Lied To have screened at Sundance, New Directors/New Films, New York Film Festival, Camden, True/False, and Ann Arbor Film Festivals, and internationally at DocSheffield, Clermont-Ferrand, Winterthür, Dresden, and Visions du Réel, among others. Their experimental narrative feature This Corrosion premiered at Haugesund Film Festival and Anthology Film Archive. Their feature HBO documentary Youth Knows No Pain (an HBO co-production) screened at IDFA, Lincoln Center and AFI Silverdocs. A six-time fellow of MacDowell, a 2018 Flaherty Seminar Fellow, and 2019 winner of the Sarah Jacobson Award and 2022 winner of the Princess Grace Special Projects Grant, McCabe’s work has been supported by McEvoy Foundation of the Arts, Yaddo, MASS MoCA, LEF Foundation, Princess Grace Foundation, Djerassi Foundation, VCCA, Jerome Foundation, SPACE Gallery, iPark Foundation and NYSCA.
Previous to their academic career, they have worked extensively in Los Angeles and New York in development and as a cameraperson, producer for unscripted television series on A&E, TNT, OWN, Discovery, Spike and ABC.
- BA, Harvard College, Visual and Environmental Studies
- MFA, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts.