Gilda Sheppard is an award-winning filmmaker who has screened her documentaries throughout the United States, Canada,  Sub Saharan Africa, and Europe. Sheppard is a 2017 Hedgebrook Fellow for documentary film, a 2019 recipient of an Artist Trust Fellowship and 2023 Best Director for Documentary at the New York Independent Film Festival, and several other national and international awards.

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Sheppard is attracted to the power of film as a tool for human interaction, healing and justice to promote dialogue and action across significant differences. Her work explores oppression, and activism particularly in relationships to power, and the triumph of the human spirit to inspire imagination and creativity.

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Her documentaries include stories of resilience of Liberian women and children refugees in Ghana; three generations of Black families in an urban neighborhood; and a film ethnography of stories from folklore started by Zora Neale Hurston in Alabama's AfricaTown and the award winning documentary Since I Been Down. 

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For over a decade, Sheppard has taught sociology classes in Washington State prisons and is a co-founder and faculty for Freedom Education Project Puget Sound (FEPPS) an organization offering college credit courses at Washington Corrections Center for Women. Gilda is faculty emerita in sociology, cultural and media studies at The Evergreen State College Tacoma Campus in Washington State.

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Sheppard is presently developing 7 part absurdist TV Mini Series set in Seattle Washington that explores humanity in a time of data driven intelligence, AI and corporate domination titled TRICKY.