The movie industry is in mourning with the news that Participant executive and producer Diane Weyermann has passed away.
The executive, who served as chief content officer since 2019, passed away from lung cancer, according to a Participant press release.
She previously served as the director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Program before leaving to join Jeff Skoll's Participant in 2005.
R.I.P.: The movie industry is in mourning with the news that Participant executive and producer Diane Weyermann has passed away
Weyermann was born in St. Louis and graduated from George Washington University and the St. Louis University Law School before starting her career as a legal aid.
She ultimately realized that the people she was trying to help didn't have a voice, and film was a way she could help provide that voice.
She went on to get her MFA at the film school at Columbia College in Chicago, which lead to her stint at Open Society Institute New York’s Arts and Culture Program.
Legal: Weyermann was born in St. Louis and graduated from George Washington University and the St. Louis University Law School before starting her career as a legal aid
There she launched the Soros Documentary Fund, which was later re-named the Sundance Documentary Fund.
She then moved to Sundance where she was in charge of the Sundance Documentary Fund.
She also launched two annual documentary film labs, the Edit & Story Lab and the Documentary Composers Lab, co-created with Peter Golub.
Sundance: She then moved to Sundance where she was in charge of the Sundance Documentary Fund
A year after Jeff Skoll founded Participant, a production company which creates content aimed at enacting social change, Weyermann came on board.
Her first project as a producer was the critically-acclaimed documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which won Oscars for Best Documentary and Best Original Song.
'In the very earliest days of Participant, I was incredibly lucky to have Diane agree to run our newfound documentary department, including our first documentary, An Inconvenient Truth,' said Jeff Skoll, founder of Participant.
