Cheney grew up in Massachusetts[2] and Maine,[3] attended
The Mountain School, a semester school for high school juniors,[4] and graduated from
Milton Academy in 1998.[2] Cheney received bachelor's and master's degrees from Yale University in 2002 and 2003.[5]
Career
He shared a
Peabody Award in 2008 for King Corn, which he co-produced and starred in.[6] In 2011, he and longtime collaborator
Curt Ellis received the 17th Annual
Heinz Award with special focus on the environment, becoming the youngest recipients to receive the
Heinz Award.[7] Cheney received an Emmy nomination in 2013 for his film The City Dark, which aired on PBS' POV.[8]
Cheney's 2018 film,
The Most Unknown, was released in theaters in May, then on Netflix in 25 languages in the summer,[9] and finally posted in nine individual episodes in YouTube.[10]
Cheney runs Wicked Delicate Films, a documentary film production company based in Maine.[11] He is a co-founder and former member of the board of directors of the
FoodCorps non-profit organization.[12] He is the brother of poet
Colin Cheney.[13]