David Sutherland wrote, produced, directed, and edited The Farmer's Wife. He has established a reputation for intimate documentary portraits of unconventional subjects, and his previous films have garnered him over 100 international film and video awards.

Sutherland combines an intense human connection to his subjects with a stunning technical virtuosity. When Sutherland was first put in touch with Juanita Buschkoetter through Interchurch Ministries of Nebraska, he recalls, "I instantly knew this was the person I wanted to film." In spite of their very different lifestyles, David and Nancy Sutherland and the Buschkoetters eventually found a commonality: spouses working side by side to accomplish a shared dream.

Sutherland's previous credits include: The American Experience's George Washington: The Man Who Wouldn't Be King, which was recently awarded the Gold Plaque Award, Specialty in Directing from the Chicago International Film Festival; Jack Levine: Feast of Pure Reason, a sixty-minute, 16mm film portrait of an American painter that was chosen by the Boston Herald as one of the ten best movies of 1986; Paul Cadmus: Enfant Terrible at 80, a sixty-minute, 16mm film portrait of a gay Works Progress Administration (WPA) painter that was a finalist at the Banff Television Festival; Feast of the Gods, a sixty-minute documentary produced for the National Gallery of Art about the mystery surrounding a painting by Titian and Bellini, which premiered on PBS and was awarded a Blue Ribbon at the American Film Festival; Halftime: Five Yale Men at Midlife, a ninety-minute PBS special awarded the CINE Golden Eagle; Out of Sight, a ninety-minute, 35mm documentary feature about a real-life blind cowgirl addicted to independence and sex, made in association with WGBH/Boston and aired nationally on the PBS series P.O.V.; High Energy, a sixty-minute portrait of high-energy physicist Melissa Franklin, which was the lead film in the national PBS series Discovering Women; The Kokorobity School, a documentary detailing the creation of an international, multicultural high school in Ghana, West Africa; and Down Around Here, a thirty-minute documentary film about a historic Cambridge diner, shot in 1977-79 and completed in 1996 which premiered on PBS.

Sutherland and his wife, Nancy, reside in Newton, Massachusetts. The Farmer's Wife marks his first collaboration with FRONTLINE.