BIO
Award-winning filmmaker and scientist, Valerie Weiss has directed three feature films and an American Girl Special for Amazon Studios. She began directing TV in the beginning of 2017 and directed seven episodes her first year including two episodes of NBC's Chicago Med, USA's Suits, TNT’s The Librarians, NBC’s Chicago PD, Impulse for YouTubeRed and ABC’s Scandal. Her work has been called "daringly light" for the way it embraces controversial topics in an enchanting way and spans the genres of action, thriller, drama, sci-fi and comedy. RogerEbert.com calls her second feature, A LIGHT BENEATH THEIR FEET, “Emotionally raw and uncommonly observant...By turns endearing, unsettling, and ultimately moving, [it] is a triumph of empathetic filmmaking." Valerie’s third feature, THE ARCHER, is a feminist coming-of-age action film best described as “Thelma and Louise” meets “First Blood” and will premiere at the 2017 SXSW Film Festival. Holding a Ph.D. in X-ray Crystallography from Harvard University has uniquely enabled Valerie to transform abstract material into compelling visual stories. Additionally, Valerie has a tremendous gift for eliciting moving and authentic performances, no matter how extreme the circumstances. Valerie is a member of the Directors Guild of America, an alumnus of the AFI DWW Program, a participant in the WeForShe DirectHer Program, the inaugural Fox Filmmaking Lab, the DGA Director Development Initiative, and is repped at Gersh and John Bauman Management.