EMILY LERER

Emily Lerer is a Directors Guild of Canada award nominated filmmaker raised in the midwest by a special education teacher and synagogue leader where a 62 foot tall “Touchdown Jesus” loomed by the highway.

Selected as Comcast’s “Rising Voices in Indie Film”, her work explores the messiness of femininity through comedies and genre-bending film.

Her films have screened at Oscar, BAFTA, and Canadian Screen award-qualifying festivals including: Celveland, Cinequest and Fantasia. T-MINUS, her trans-abortion-road-trip film won audience awards at Oscar-qualifying Out on Film and Newfest. Her debut feature OMI (Deadline, Variety) will premiere at the Austin Film Festival (as mentioned in The Hollywood Reporter)

Her screenplays have advanced at Austin Film Festival, Nashville Film Festival Screenplay Competition, Page Awards, Atlanta Film Festival Screenplay Competition and Final Draft Big Break Contest. She has made the Red List top 20 Thriller Scripts as #7 and WeScreenplay Competition top 5% of the 60,000 scripts submitted. 

Connecting empathetically to actors comes naturally for Emily who spent years directing off-broadway theatre. Prior to directing, she spent a near decade working in television as a post supervisor alongside showrunners including: John Wells and Lena Waithe. Her television work spans network, cable, and prime time for Warner Brothers, Showtime, Fox, A.B.C., H.B.O., B.E.T., Annapurna, Freeform and Netflix on shows including GREY’S ANATOMY, PRETTY LITTLE LIARS - ORIGINAL SIN and SHAMELESS.

A proud alumnus of the Sundance Directing Television Intensive, Alliance of Women Directors Directing the Directing the Actors Lab. As a champion for safer sets, she is earning her Intimacy Coordinators and Directors certification and is a member of Women in Film, Television Academy, Film Fatales, and the Producers Guild of America. She strives to make her orange tabby cat Gloria Steinem proud.