Vanessa Johnston is a documentary filmmaker and video journalist based in Washington, DC. In 2022, she founded Plumline Films, a production company that specializes in history and current affairs documentaries. For nearly a decade Johnston was a news producer for Reuters, covering the top stories coming out of the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Most recently, she directed and produced the short films, BREAKING: From the Streets to the Olympics, which tracks the evolution of breakdancing, and Pen Pals, about two teenage girls - one from Ukraine and one from the U.S. - who correspond through wartime for Voice of America. In 2022, Johnston won the Documentary Seed Fund Grant Award from Women in Film & Video to develop her feature on Sigrid Schultz, the extraordinary American journalist who covered Nazi Germany. She began her journalism career as a radio reporter at Deutsche Welle in Bonn, Germany. Her work has also appeared on PBS, The Financial Times, NPR, and the BBC. Johnston holds an M.A. in European History, Politics & Society from Columbia University.