Alex Bretow

Alex Bretow (born 1992) is an American film producer, director, and screenwriter. In 2021, Forbes selected Bretow for its "Next 1000: The Upstart Entrepreneurs Redefining the American Dream".

Early life Alex Bretow was born in Oakland, California in 1990. Bretow began making films when he was eight years old. As a student, he made the short documentary Day in the Life which was shown at the Campus Movie Fest in 2012. He created the short film The Call In in 2013.

He worked on the film Burn Country starring James Franco during college. Their first production was the film Generations, directed by Kourosh Ahari and financed by Tom Hanks, which won several awards at international film festivals.

In 2020, Bretow produced The Night, a horror film directed by Ahari and starring Cannes Best Actor Shahab Hosseini. The film was a co-production of the United States and Iran, and was shot in Los Angeles with dialogue in Persian and English. The film received positive reviews from critics and audiences, was praised for its Kubrickian style and its portrayal of Iranian immigrants in America.

Bretow also formed Pol Media, a distribution and production company, with Hosseini and Ahari in 2020. Shahab Hosseini will star in Bretow's biopic of the Iranian physicist Ali Javan.

In 2021, Forbes selected Bretow for its "Next 1000: The Upstart Entrepreneurs Redefining the American Dream".

In 2022, it was announced that Bretow would produce Diary of a Murderer with Brontë, a crime thriller directed by Ahari. The film is based on the bestselling novella by Young-ha Kim, which Mammoth Pictures acquired the film and television rights to in 2022.

In 2023, Bretow began producing a project based on the Bulgarian Kukeri and the tradition of Surva, a folkloric horror film directed by Ahari. The film is inspired by the Bulgarian folklore of the Kukeri, masked men who perform rituals to ward off evil spirits, which was popularized by The New Yorker's documentary. Bazuka, the Bulgarian production company behind the doc, partnered with Mammoth Pictures on the project.

Awards Alameda International Film Festival 2018 – Ensemble Acting Award (Generations) California Independent Film Festival 2018 – Best Short (Generations) Molins Film Festival 2020 – Best Director; Best Screenplay (The Night) Grimm Up North Film Festival 2021 – Best Feature Film (The Night)

Selected filmography Year Title Role Notes 2018 Generations Producer Short film 2020 The Night Producer Feature film 2023 Parallel Executive Producer Feature film