Talent Guide

Jonah Markowitz

  • Discipline:Director
  • Program Year:Grants and Awards 2017

Bio

Jonah Markowitz recently finished post-production on the forthcoming documentary film Political Animals. Concurrently, he was an artist in resident at the San Francisco Film Society, where he completed the screenplay for his next feature Start At The End. Previously, Markowitz wrote and directed the critically acclaimed narrative feature Shelter which was released theatrically by Regent Entertainment. The film was recently named “The Number 1 Gay Film of All Time” by AfterElton.com on their bi-annual poll. Shelter also won the HBO Award for Outstanding First Feature, The Scion Director’s Award, as well as audience awards in New York, Vancouver, Sao Paulo, Melbourne and more. Previously, Markowitz wrote and directed two short films, I Left Me and Hung Up, which screened at over 40 festivals worldwide and were both programmed at The American Cinematheque.

Markowitz also has a background in production design. His most recent film, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, premiered at Sundance 2015 and won the Grand Prix at Berlin. His credits also include the Sundance Jury and Audience Award winning Quincenera, as well as Studio film such as We Are Marshall, The Help, and The House of Sand and Fog.

Markowitz graduated from the Film department at Emerson College and also studied art history in the Netherlands, as well as film theory and production at FAMU in The Czech Republic.

Current Project

Political Animals

Logline

Political Animals tells the story of the civil rights struggle of this century - the LGBT movement, through the eyes of women, a group often left out of gay histories. Emotionally charged likes its subjects, the film follows the first four openly Gay California Representatives who took the fight for the causes most personal to them off the streets and into the halls of government to start the legal battle to create lasting, significant social change.