Aaron Douglas Johnston is an American filmmaker who is based in the Netherlands. He is known for the films Bumblefuck, USA, and My Sister's Quinceañera.[1] Both films focus on outsider themes and mixup the boundary between documentary and fiction through his use of non-professional actors.[2][3] He has used community funding to provide the small budgets for his films.[4]
Johnston was born in 1978 and raised in Muscatine, Iowa.[5] He studied sociology at Oxford and Yale before finding his way into filmmaking in the Netherlands.[6] In Amsterdam, he studied directing at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy, where he made the Sundance-selected short Today and Tomorrow, a drama made with and about political asylum seekers living in the Netherlands.
2014 Independent Spirit Awards – Someone to Watch Award (Nominated)[7][8]