A Canadian producer who swaps a hockey stick for a camera, Shawney Cohen builds a documentary career shaped by meticulous story-editing and a focus on cultivating strong relationships with participants. Over five influential years producing for vice.com, his content garners over 100,000,000 views. Known for an exceptional ability to capture vérité in the field, Cohen leads Vice’s award-winning digital documentary team, producing groundbreaking films like Dopesick. The feature is the first documentary to expose the street use of fentanyl and Big Pharma's role in Canada’s overdose crisis. As part of a Viceland series that wins a Canadian Screen Award in 2017, Dopesick is rebranded as Fentanyl: The Drug Deadlier than Heroin for YouTube, where it generates over 12 million views. The film is acknowledged by Jane Philpott, Canada’s Health Minister, and just months later, the Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act is passed in Canadian Parliament, offering legal protection for those seeking emergency help during an overdose.

 

Following this, Cohen receives the TELUS Feature Documentary Fund and directs the Crave Original Rat Park in 2019—a groundbreaking exploration of addiction that’s now part of counseling psychology curricula at universities worldwide. Watch the first five minutes of the film here.​