Fred Koschmann grew up in Illinois. Shortly after graduating from the University of Illinois in Champaign, he moved to New York City where he worked for magazines, including New York Magazine and Popular Science as a video producer for PopSci. He moved to Chicago, studied documentary under Academy Award-nominated director Bill Siegel (The Trials of Muhammad Ali), and completed work on a short film titled Wild Solitude about the remote Deep Springs college in Eastern California. He also started and ran an indie film festival called Backyard Film & Music Fest from 2008-11. He then moved to California and gained film editing experience on All Eyes and Ears, directed by Vanessa Hope and produced by Ted Hope, a documentary about US-China relations. It premiered at Tribeca in 2015, and that same year, he moved to Los Angeles. He soon edited on other documentaries, including Bunker77, directed by Takuji Masuda, about surfing legend Bunker Spreckels; Hal, directed by Amy Scott, about film director Hal Ashby, which premiered at Sundance in 2018; and Rulon, directed by Adam Irving, about the Olympic gold medalist in heavy-weight wrestling Rulon Gardner for the Olympic Channel/NBC. In 2019, he edited a narrative film titled Faith, directed by Eli Daughdrill, which premiered at Indie Memphis Film Festival. In 2022, he edited a narrative film called Frybread Face and Me, a semi-autobiographical story by the director Billy Luther, about growing up Diné (Navajo) in San Diego, executive produced by Taika Waititi and featuring an all-Native American cast. It premiered at SXSW in March 2023. He is finishing working on a documentary learning what his dad (a world-traveling academic) did for work, called The Interaction Cowboy.
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