The Copenhagen-born director Sandra Winther has an adventurer’s spirit, at once fearless and sensitively in tune with the environment. She first came to New York as an exchange student, studying film for a semester at Columbia University. She then set down roots in the city, working with independent directors while plotting her own way forward. “I was often in an office or studio craving going out into the world, working with real stories, getting under the belly of things, being immersed in other cultures besides my own,” Winther says. One early project—a docuseries in collaboration with i-D and New Balance—centered on subcultures of sport in Tokyo, London, and New York. It set the tone for a career that continues to braid together her interests in storytelling and movement and nature, as seen in the New York Times Op-Doc “A New Wave,” about the South African surfer Mikey February, and her debut documentary feature Lowland Kids, which follows two Louisiana teenagers and their uncle on their slowly sinking island. Now balancing the international festival circuit with work on her first narrative feature, she is carving out time for stillness at home and future surf trips. “I feel the most connected to myself when I’m in the ocean,” says Winther, whose recent trips to Brazil, Ecuador, and Tahiti have taken her far from her native Denmark. “When we’re born, we're not destined to stay there or be what our parents or friends imagined we would be. In a way, there really are no limits to where we can go.”
