Catherine Tambini is an award-winning independent filmmaker known for her impactful and thought-provoking work. She directed and co-produced Hate Rising with Jorge Ramos, a co-production of HBO and Univision Story House, which won the Impact Award for Outstanding Documentary from the National Hispanic Media Coalition.

Tambini earned an Emmy Award nomination for directing and producing The State of Arizona (with Carlos Sandoval), a film that also won a CINE Golden Eagle, was nominated for an Imagen Award, and was broadcast on PBS's Independent Lens.

Her directorial and production work on the highly acclaimed Farmingville (also with Carlos Sandoval) earned the Sundance Special Jury Award, among many other honors, and received a nomination for an Independent Spirit Award. The film was the season opener for PBS's award-winning documentary series POV.

Tambini co-produced Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse with Anne Belle, an Academy Award®-nominated documentary about George Balanchine’s iconic ballerina. The film premiered at the New York Film Festival and was broadcast on PBS's Great Performances/Dance in America.

She also directed and produced Art and Heart: The World of Isaiah Sheffer, which premiered at Lincoln Center during the New York Jewish Film Festival and screened at numerous festivals nationwide. Her documentary Perfectly Normal for Me, which explores the lives of children in a dance program aiming to change perceptions of disabilities, had its national broadcast premiere on PBS's America ReFramed after screening at film festivals across the U.S. and Canada, including Lincoln Center's Dance on Camera and the ReelAbilities Film Festivals in New York.

In addition to her documentary work, Tambini assisted in the production design of several notable Hollywood films, including The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Steel Magnolias, True Colors, and The Secret of My Success. She also field-produced and filmed segments for the reality series MTV’s I’m From Rolling Stone and TLC’s Pageant Perfect.

Tambini has shared her expertise by teaching workshops for the Sundance Documentary Fund and the University of Oklahoma. She has served as a juror for the Miami International Film Festival, Boston Independent Film Festival, and BendFilm Festival, and was a guest programmer for the Brooklyn Film Festival for several years. Additionally, she has been a panelist at numerous film festivals, discussing various aspects of filmmaking.

Her work has been supported by multiple grants from the Sundance Institute, the MacArthur Foundation, ITVS, Latino Public Broadcasting, and BritDoc's GoodPitch, among others. Tambini holds an MFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and a BFA from the University of Oklahoma. She is currently an adjunct professor at NYU's Kanbar Institute for Undergraduate Film and Television at Tisch School of the Arts, where she is dedicated to teaching and mentoring the next generation of filmmakers.