About Us

ANDREW YOUNG | DIRECTOR | PRODUCER | DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY | WRITER

SUSAN TODD | DIRECTOR | PRODUCER | WRITER

Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated director/producers Susan Todd and Andrew Young are the principals and co-founders of Archipelago Films. The company has been making impactful natural history and social documentary films for the past three decades. Their mission is to inspire, entertain, and ignite audiences through the highest quality, visual storytelling.

Archipelago Films has produced over a dozen feature docs and television documentaries for broadcast on National Geographic, HBO, Cinemax, NBC, PBS, BBC, Vulcan Productions, Smithsonian, Canal Plus/Arte, as well as theatrical release, museum and zoo installations, and 3D Giant Screen/IMAX venues around the globe.

Backyard Wilderness, their first 3D Giant Screen/IMAX film, swept the 2018 GSCA Achievement Awards, including Best Film: Short Subject, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, and Best Lifelong Learning. Combining cutting-edge natural history techniques with innovative visual effects, Backyard Wilderness was produced under their 501(c) 3 organization, Arise Media, which they created to produce media about the most urgent social and environmental issues of our time. The film reveals an interconnected ecosystem of plants and animals that live around a typical suburban home while telling the story of a screen-obsessed human family that has everything it needs except a sense of connection to the world around them.

Young and Todd recently finished producing, directing, and DPing their second 3D Giant Screen/IMAX film, Wings Over Water, about migratory birds in North America and the prairie wetland ecosystem they depend on for survival. Narrated by acclaimed actor, Michael Keaton, and with Executive Producers Chris Dorsey of Dorsey Pictures and Charlie S. Potter of the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation, the film didn’t disappoint at the GSCA Achievement Awards, winning Best Film: Short Subject, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Lifelong Learning, and Best Sound! The Film is currently playing in Giant Screen theaters worldwide.

This huge success is only possible with a team of amazingly creative and motivated individuals. Meet the wonderful…