Sam Pollard is a renowned film and television editor, documentary producer, and director. Between 1990 and 2010, he collaborated with Spike Lee on various projects, including editing several films such as Mo' Better Blues, Jungle Fever, and Bamboozled. Their documentary work together includes Four Little Girls and When the Levees Broke, which earned critical acclaim and awards. He recently released Katrina: Come Hell and High Water, which premiered at #1 on Netflix, earned 3 Emmy nominations, and won the Gotham Award for Breakthrough Nonfiction Series.

Since 2012, Pollard has focused on producing and directing. He created documentaries like Slavery By Another Name for PBS, August Wilson: The Ground On Which I Stand for American Masters, and Two Trains Runnin’, which premiered at the Full Frame Film Festival. He's also worked on projects like Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me and the series Why We Hate for The Discovery Channel. In 2020, Pollard received the International Documentary Association’s first Career Achievement Award. The following year, Film at Lincoln Center honored him as one of “cinema’s most dedicated chroniclers of the Black experience in America.” He also contributed as a director to the HBO series Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children and completed MLK/FBI. Pollard served as an executive producer on The Perfect Neighbor, which premiered at Sundance in 2025. Recently, he formed Message Pictures with collaborators Geeta Gandbhir and Alisa Payne, focusing on sharing stories that amplify unheard voices and shed light on important issues.