KIRK WOLFINGER

Kirk Wolfinger is an Emmy and Peabody Award winning filmmaker who has been making films since 1985 when he directed his first documentary, Black Magic, winner of the American Film Festival's Blue Ribbon. Kirk has gone on to produce and direct numerous critically acclaimed, award winning television specials and series broadcast nationally and internationally on most major networks, streamers, and leading cable outlets. 

Kirk's forte is adventure and science programming. He has been working in the genre continuously beginning in the early 1990s when he produced his first PBS NOVA episode, Submarine. Since then, Kirk has produced more than 27 NOVA specials on topics ranging from biological weapons to lost Nazi U-boats to climate change in Antarctica. He has worked with some of the most brilliant minds in science including Svante Pabo, the leading geneticist at the Max Planck Institute, Saul Perlmutter, physicist of UC Berkeley and he has many times filmed Dr. Robert Ballard explorer in residence at the National Geographic Society for several ocean-oriented science specials. He has accompanied a host of world-renowned explorers, scientists and astronauts on dozens of adventures across the globe and deep beneath the sea.  

Kirk produced and directed Holocaust Escape Tunnel for the PBS NOVA series, a project that led him to his current documentary feature about the holocaust “Resistance: They Fought Back”. He produced and directed USS Indianapolis: Final Chapter for PBS telling the story of discovering the ship after 73 years by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s RV Petrel. In 2022 he helmed the 8 episode series “Lost Ships of WW2” for Fox Nation telling the stories of the most iconic military vessels of the United States. For Animal Planet he made Monsters of the Abyss as well as the series “Yankee Jungle”. For NOVA WONDERS What’s The Universe Made Of about dark matter and dark energy, which he considers much more mysterious than any monster of the abyss.

Recently Kirk has collaborated with the DPAA (Defense Department POW/MIA Agency) locating the remains of US airmen lost in the coastal waters of Croatia, winning an Emmy for the film ‘A Solemn Promise’, which was a sequel to his NOVA ‘The Last B-24’ recovering the remains of two pilots to their final resting place in the United States. 2023 saw him wrapping production of season 2 of the Lone Wolf/History Channel series “Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters” where they have identified several ship and airplane wrecks including a large wing fragment of the Space Shuttle ‘Challenger’, a discovery which made International headlines in 2022. Collaborating with Lisa for 3 seasons of their series for Smithsonian “America’s Hidden Stories” which has been nominated for 3 Emmy’s, winning 1.

(Left to Right): Bruce Litecky, Kirk, and Nick Doob exiting the submarine USS Michigan mid ocean in 1991.

In 2009 Kirk released his 90-minute independent feature documentary about a high school football rivalry in Maine, The Rivals, which has taken home numerous awards including: Best Picture (Phoenix Film Festival), and a Silver Chris (Columbus Film Festival) as well as a host of official entries in festivals across the country. The feature doc was subsequently purchased and broadcast by the Smithsonian Channel.

Kirk produced the anniversary event series, D-Day in HD (2 x 120) for History and the limited series, Alien Deep featuring Dr. Robert Ballard for National Geographic Channel. For NOVA he executive produced Cold Case JFK for the 50th Anniversary of the Kennedy assassination.

Past successes include executive producing and directing 35 1X60 episodes of the History Channel's popular Deep Sea Detectives series and several episodes of History's Tougher In Alaska. Notable other History Channel specials include Titanic's Achilles Heel, a sequel to the groundbreaking documentary, Titanic's Final Moment's: Missing Pieces; and several space themed shows including, Failure Is Not An Option, a sequel to Beyond the Moon. Other Lone Wolf productions helmed by Kirk include the NOVA episode Pocahontas Revealed, To The Moon and Hitler's Lost Sub, inspiration for the bestselling book, Shadow Divers. Also of note are The Ravens: Covert War In Laos for Discovery Times, and Mayday: Lost At Sea and Pearl Harbor: Legacy of Attack for National Geographic Specials.

Kirk won a national Emmy for their NOVA/New York Times production of Bioterror in 2002. He was also nominated the next year for this NOVA, Dirty Bomb. While working with Varied Directions International, Kirk served as series producer and director for Turner's highly acclaimed original series, Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon. In addition, he also produced Portrait of Castro's Cuba for TBS, and two episodes of the PBS series Making Sense of the Sixties. Some of Kirk's later work at Varied Directions included Submarine!, Daredevils of the Sky, Titanic's Lost Sister, Battle Alert In The Gulf, The Beast of Loch Ness and Lincoln's Secret Weapon, all created for NOVA.

In addition to the News and Documentary Emmy won for Bioterror (NOVA/WGBH), Kirk has received a George F. Peabody Award for Moon Shot (Turner), an American Film Festival Blue Ribbon and the Independent Documentary Association Award. He has been nominated for several national News and Documentary Emmy’s and one Primetime Emmy as well. Anecdotally Kirk dived 2.5 miles deep in a Russian submersible to photograph RMS Titanic, has been helicoptered into remote Antarctica for three days to trek and photograph the Dry Valleys and was flown clandestinely into Laos to photograph what had been a secret U.S. airbase. Kirk has interviewed 9 of the 12 men who have walked on the Moon. 

Lone Wolf Media was founded in 1997 by Kirk and Lisa Wolfinger and has nurtured the film careers of many young producers, directors and cinematographers, most of whom were born and/or educated here in Maine -- something of which they are extremely proud. 

Awards (full list available upon request)

Emmy Award News and Documentary
Bioterror: NOVA/WGBH
Failure is Not an Option/History Channel

Emmy Award (NE )
Coma: The Journey Back: (Directing) PBS/CPB
A Solemn Promise: (Directing) PBS/MPBN 

Emmy Nomination (Primetime)
Moon Shot: Turner Broadcasting

Emmy Nomination (News and Documentary)
Dirty Bomb Attack: NOVA/WGBH
America’s Hidden Stories Washington’s Secret Love: Smithsonian Channel  

George Foster Peabody Award
Moon. Shot: Turner Broadcasting  

Phoenix International Film Festival / Best Documentary Feature
The Rivals

Kirk on set with son Ezra Wolfinger

Double Wolfinger slate