Danielle Lessovitz

Danielle Lessovitz is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. She began her career in 2008, releasing several short films before her feature directorial debut Port Authority, which premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival's Un Certain Regard section. She has screened her films at more than 100 film festivals worldwide. She typically casts non-actors in her films, and focuses on marginalized communities.

Early life and education Lessovitz was born in San Francisco. She grew up in Kansas City during the 1990s, but is currently based in New York City.

After finishing her studies at Northwestern, she travelled across the US and internationally before ending up in New York City. While in New York, she received a Master of Fine Arts in Film Directing from New York University Tisch School of the Arts, where she was awarded a fellowship for her studies and taught by, among others, Ira Sachs. The film is set in Brooklyn and depicts a pregnant Haitian refugee as she worries about the health of her baby. It was screened at the 30th annual Torino Film Festival. From this film, Lessovitz was honored with a New Filmmaker Award from the Philadelphia Jewish Film Society, Best Hartland short at the Kansas City Film Festival, and the Ben Lazeroff Award for screenwriting. Eric Kohn for IndieWire said that for the film, Lessovitz "burrows inside a persecuted world without pandering to it".

The film was executive produced by Martin Scorsese, who Lessovitz said she was scared to reveal the final product to, Lessovitz has said that she knew of ball culture from having seen Paris Is Burning as a film student, but did not know that it was still around in the 2010s until she was invited to one while in a crisis after her father's suicide; watching people vogueing gave her "respite" in this time, and speaking to drag families helped her gain a fresh understanding of family structures. Kohn said that Lessovitz's "ability to address the drama's specific hook in measured terms enables this scrappy little movie to strike a quietly progressive note".

Filmography