Jared Lank (Mi’kmaq) is an award winning interdisciplinary filmmaker and artist based in Maine. His films explore identity and belonging, focusing on the existential nuances of cultural loss, erasure, and assimilation. Through metaphor and an Indigenous cultural lens, his films expose the colonial underpinnings of society’s systemic race and equity problems, emphasizing the ill effects of globalization on Indigenous people, culture, and land, often through a perspective informed by intergenerational trauma and lived experience. He incorporates traditional knowledge, mythos, and cosmology in his films and uses film as a reflective medium for contemplating various ontological themes. He is currently writing his first feature-length film, FORERUNNER, as a 2025 Sundance Institute Native Lab Fellow and a Sundance supported proof of concept short of the same name.

His first independent short film, Bay of Herons, was an official selection of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and screened as part of the 2024 Sundance Indigenous Shorts Tour. The film has also screened at numerous festivals internationally, including the Camden International Film Festival, Regard: Saguenay International Short Film Festival (Indigenous Perspectives Award), Norwegian Short Film Festival, Maine Outdoor Film Festival and Bates Film Festival (Best Short Award).

In addition to writing and directing, Lank also practices music composition and still photography. His interdisciplinary works have been featured in several notable museums, including the Portland Museum of Art and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. He also is a long-time advocate for Wabanaki representation in education and formerly taught Anthropology at the University of Southern Maine.