Petter Ringbom is a New York-based director of documentary and narrative movies who has used film to explore a wide range of subjects—a famed musician’s return to the stage; Laszlo Maholy-Nagy’s New Bauhaus in Chicago; a struggle between environmentalists and industrial developers over limestone mining in Sweden. Ringbom’s work, including his documentary filmmaking, often brings a sharp, empathetic eye to overlooked subjects, whether in the world of music, disability, or social issues. What the films have in common is the director’s highly inventive approach to telling the story of each subject.

Ringbom started his career as a designer and art director. After studying at The Cooper Union School of Art in New York, he became a partner in the creative agency Flat, where he worked for clients like MoMA, Red Cross, and ESPN. He has taught at Parsons School of Design and New York University and served on the board of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

Ringbom started with probing short films like Questions For My Father (2011), in which men sit directly in front of the camera and pose difficult questions to their fathers, whether living or dead. It was selected for the Art Video program at Art Basel Miami in 2012. His debut feature documentary, The Russian Winter, follows American musician John Forte, formerly of the Fugees, as he travels to Russia to perform after seven years in prison. The film premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2012 and screened at IDFA, Moscow International Film Festival, and Gothenburg International Film Festival. His 2014 documentary, Shield and Spear, considered the art and culture of South Africa 20 years after the end of apartheid.

Most recently, Ringbom and his partner in the production company Opendox, Marquise Stillwell, made This World Is Not My Own (2023) about the artist Nellie Mae Rowe (1990–1982), who was compelled to make art despite obstacles of racism, poverty, and sexism. For most of her life, Rowe made art in obscurity, propelled by a force she viewed as a God-given gift. As the daughter of a sharecropper and former slave, she made art from whatever she could find. As an adult, she transformed her home into her “Playhouse,” an imaginative oasis filled with vibrant drawings, handmade sculptures and dolls, and collected objects. Six years before her death, a wealthy gallerist, Judith Alexander, “discovered” and introduced her work to the art world. Ringbom and Stillwell chose to tell her story by combining interviews with scripted scenes with digitally animated characters voiced by actors Uzo Aduba and Amy Warren. The result is a portrait of Rowe’s struggles to dedicate her life to art while exploring the personal and political events that shaped her singular body of work. The Hollywood Reporter described the film as "tak[ing] an unorthodox approach to biography...in a spirit of inventiveness that honors its subject.”