ABOUT
Christopher Riley is a double BAFTA and triple Grierson-nominated documentary film director and writer specialising in science, engineering and history. He has directed and produced more than thirty films for the BBC, Film4, Netflix, Disney, National Geographic, The Discovery Channel and the Smithsonian, and has written and directed commercial shorts and branded content for HSBC, Vodafone and architects Foster + Partners.
Chris co-wrote The Moonwalkers with Tom Hanks; an immersive film which premiered at Lightroom London in December 2023, to five-star reviews, and at Lightroom Soeul in June 2024 and Space Centre Houston in March 2025.
He is best known for his BBC film The Girl who talked to Dolphins – nominated for every major UK documentary award, and his innovative experiential documentary First Orbit – recreating Yuri Gagarin's pioneering space flight, screened on over 1600 screens in more than 130 countries, including UNESCO HQ in Paris.
He conceived and co-produced the Sundance-winning Ron Howard documentary In the Shadow of the Moon, and produced the Netflix/BBC Storyville true-crime thriller The Fear of 13, which premiered at the London Film Festival and was nominated for a Grierson. He wrote, produced and directed across the hit National Geographic Will Smith series One Strange Rock, and the BBC/PBS Patrick Stewart series Revolutions.
His VR show of astronaut Tim Peake’s Soyuz Capsule return to Earth has been seen by over 50,000 people across the UK and his novel video installations, using found footage, have been screened around the world. His Apollo 11 fiftieth anniversary collaboration with 59Productions - a commission from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum - Go for the Moon - projected animations and footage onto the Washington Monument, attracting half a million people to the National Mall in Washington D.C. for America’s celebrations.
His most recent documentary films for smaller screens include:
The Twenty Million Dollar Time Bomb: Commissioned by National Geographic this documentary tells the story of Austria's most notorious mass murderer Udo Proksch, who blew up a ship in the 1970s to claim the insurance money, killing half the crew, and the team of explorers who hacked technology to track down the wreck and bring the murderer to justice. The film won the Gold Medal for best documentary on History and Society at the 2024 New York Festivals TV & Film Awards and was nominated for a 2024 Maritime Media Award.
Narcos: two stories from the front line of the war on drugs for National Geographic and Disney+. A Drain the Oceans story.
One Cup a Thousand Stories - a unique BBC Studios landmark commission from China - on the art, science, history and culture of tea.
Battle for the Black Swan – a groundbreaking documentary for National Geographic, uniting the treasure hunter team that recovered the long-lost wreck of a Spanish galleon from almost a mile beneath the North Atlantic, and the legal team that fought to bring it back to Spain. Nominated for a BAFTA, and winner of the Gold Medal for best documentary on History and Society at the 2022 New York Festivals TV & Film Awards.
Future Fantastic: China’s Science Revolution. Five films profiling Chinese scientists and engineers, working at the top of their chosen fields in medicine, genetics, robotics, cosmology and planetary science; made in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
He is a part-time eclipse chaser - presenting the BBC’s coverage of them from the Channel Islands in 1999, Zambia in 2001, the Faroe Islands in 2015, and hosting smaller audiences in the United States in 2017 & 2024.
He is the author of over a dozen books, including the best selling Haynes Apollo 11 owner’s workshop manual, and the acclaimed children’s book Where once we stood, nominated for a 2020 Kate Greenaway award. He has written for The Guardian newspaper and the Evening Standard, and has presented science documentaries for BBC Radio 4.