Oren Moverman


Oren Moverman is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, film director, and Emmy Award-nominated producer based in New York City. He is a co-founder of Sight Unseen Pictures, alongside Julia Lebedev and Eddie Vaisman, an independent production and financing company with offices in LA and NY.

Biography

Moverman was born in Israel. He is a graduate of Brooklyn College.
The Messenger, Moverman's first film as a director, co-written with Alessandro Camon and starring Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton, Jena Malone, Steve Buscemi, Eamonn Walker, Michael Chernus, and Jeremy Strong, premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay award and the Peace Film award at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival in 2009. The film was also awarded the Grand Jury Prize and the International Critics' Prize from the Deauville Film Festival. Moverman received the Spotlight Award for Directorial Debut from the National Board of Review, and the film also received nominations for Best Screenplay and Best First Feature from the Independent Spirit Awards.
The Messenger was selected for the 2009 AFI Movies of The Year Award. It was also nominated for two Academy Awards - Moverman and Camon were nominated for Best Screenplay, and Woody Harrelson was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.
Moverman collaborated with Harrelson and Foster again in his 2011 second directorial film Rampart, which was co-written with James Ellroy. In addition to Harrelson and Foster, who also served as producer, the film starred Sigourney Weaver, Robin Wright, Ice Cube, Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon, Steve Buscemi, Audra McDonald, Jon Bernthal, Brie Larson, and many more.
Following, Moverman wrote and directed the IFC release, Time Out of Mind, starring Richard Gere, Ben Vereen, Jena Malone, Kyra Sedgwick, Steve Buscemi, Jeremy Strong, and Colman Domingo, among others, which won The International Critics Award at the 2014 Toronto Film Festival.
Moverman wrote and directed The Dinner, based on the Herman Koch bestseller, in 2017. The film stars Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Steve Coogan, Chloe Sevigny, Rebecca Hall, Charlie Plummer, Adepero Oduye and Michael Chernus. The Orchard-released film was an official selection at the Berlin Film Festival.
As a writer, Moverman co-wrote Udi Aloni’s Junction 48, winner of the Panorama Audience Award at the 2016 Berlin Film Festival and the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival International Award; Bill Pohlad’s Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy ; Ira Sachs' Married Life ; Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There, which earned an Oscar nomination for Cate Blanchett and won the 2007 Venice Film Festival Special Jury Prize; Bertha Bay-Sa Pan’s 2002 Sundance Competition film Face , and Alison Maclean’s Jesus' Son, which won the Little Golden Lion Award and the Ecumenical Award at the Venice Film Festival.
Moverman produced Joseph Cedar’s ; Ido Fluk’s The Ticket ; Kent Jones’ narrative feature debut, Diane, which was executive produced by Martin Scorsese, landing three awards at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival, including best narrative feature, and Oscar-winning director Guy Nattiv's, Skin, which won the International Critics' Prize at the 2018 Toronto Film Festival and sold to A24. He also served as Executive Producer on Junction 48, Love & Mercy, and Anja Marquardt’s directorial debut, She's Lost Control, which was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards and won the International Confederation of Art Cinemas Award at the 2014 Berlin International Film Festival.
At the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, Moverman had three films in competition as a producer and one Premiere Section film he wrote. He produced Paul Dano’s directorial debut, Wildlife, based on the Richard Ford story, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Bill Camp, and Carey Mulligan. The film was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards. Moverman also produced Jennifer Fox's The Tale, starring Laura Dern, Common and Ellen Burstyn. The Tale earned two Emmy nominations, including Best TV Movie and a leading actress nod for Dern, as well as three Independent Spirit Awards nominations. Moverman also executive produced the Sight Unseen film from breakout director Reinaldo Marcus Green, Monsters and Men, starring John David Washington, Anthony Ramos, and Kelvin Harrison Jr., which won a Sundance Jury Award for first film and was nominated for one Independent Spirit Award. He wrote Puzzle, directed by Marc Turtletaub and starring Kelly Macdonald and Irrfan Khan, which won the Audience Award at the 2018 Deauville Film Festival.
Moverman produced Cory Finley’s second feature, Bad Education, starring Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney, which sold to HBO at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival, premiering in April 2020, garnering two Emmy Award nominations, and executive produced Justin Simien's follow up to Dear White People, Bad Hair, sold to Hulu at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Both films are Sight Unseen productions.
Moverman also wrote and produced Marc Meyers' Human Capital, an adaptation of Stephen Amidon’s 2005 novel, starring Liev Schreiber, Maya Hawke, Betty Gabriel, Alex Wolff, Peter Sarsgaard, Aasif Mandvi, Paul Sparks, and Marisa Tomei, distributed in 2020 by Vertical Entertainment.
He recently executive produced Rebecca Hall's directorial debut Passing, starring Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga, André Holland,
Alexander Skarsgård and Bill Camp, well as Udi Aloni's documentary, Why Is We Americans?'', a film focused on famed poet and activist Amiri Baraka and his son, Ras Baraka, the Mayor of Newark.

Filmography

As screenwriter