Irene Taylor Brodsky

Irene Taylor is a Peabody and Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated director and producer whose documentaries have shown theatrically, at film festivals and on television worldwide. Irene’s most recent film, Leave No Trace (2022) premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival, and won a 2022 Columbia-DuPont award.In 2019, Irene made a film about her deaf son, her deaf father and Beethoven, as he went deaf , while writing his famous sonata, in Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements (2019). It premiered at Sundance 2019, and was nominated for Special Merit in Documentary Filmmaking the 2020 Prime Time Emmy Awards.Irene began her documentary career in journalism as a producer with CBS Sunday Morning. Her first feature documentary, Hear and Now (2007), a documentary memoir about her deaf parents, won the Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival in 2007, a Peabody Award and numerous awards at festivals around the world. It was also nominated by the Producer’s Guild of America in 2008 for Documentary of the Year. Her HBO feature documentary Beware the Slenderman (2016) received two 2017 Critics’ Choice Award nominations, for Best Director and Best Documentary, and was also nominated for a 2018 Emmy.Irene’s previous credits include several theatrically released short films, all which aired on HBO. The Final Inch (2009), about the global effort to eradicate polio, was nominated for an Academy award, multiple Emmys, and won the IDA’s Pare Lorentz Award. After the 2010 Gulf oil spill, Irene followed the life of a single bird found coated in oil, and made Saving Pelican 895 (2011) which won an Emmy for its affecting music. In 2014, she directed One Last Hug: Three Days at Grief Camp (2014), which won the 2014 Prime Time Emmy for Best Children’s Programming. In 2016 she released Open Your Eyes (2016), about an aging couple living in the Himalayas determined to regain their sight. Her short opinion film Between Sound and Silence (2018) was released by The New York Times Op-Docs.Irene’s early career began in Kathmandu, Nepal, working as a Himalayan Mountain guide and author. Her photography book, “Buddhas in Disguise,” became the basis for her first documentary film, made in 1993 with the United Nations. She is a graduate of New York University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She founded her production company Vermilion Films in 2006.