Debra Granik was born on February 6,1963 and is an American filmmaker.
25 Facts About Debra Granik
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Debra Granik is most known for 2004's Down to the Bone, which starred Vera Farmiga, 2010's Winter's Bone, which starred Jennifer Lawrence in her breakout performance and for which Granik was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and 2018's Leave No Trace, a film based on the book My Abandonment by Peter Rock.
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Debra Granik grew up in the suburbs of Washington DC Her parents divorced in 1978.
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In 2001, Debra Granik received an MFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
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In 2023, Debra Granik will receive an honorary doctorate from Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
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Debra Granik took film classes at the Studio for Interrelated Media at the Massachusetts College of Art.
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Debra Granik worked in production on educational media projects, eventually working on long form documentaries by Boston-area filmmakers before deciding to go to graduate school for filmmaking at New York University.
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In 1997, Debra Granik directed her first short film, Snake Feed, as her senior thesis with the mentorship of NYU film professor Boris Frumin, who was instrumental in sharing his love of post-World War II European neorealist films.
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Debra Granik workshopped and developed the short film into a feature film at the Sundance Lab.
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Debra Granik has said that Snake Feed was a work of narrative fiction, with the main characters, recovering addict Irene and her boyfriend Rick, playing dramatized versions of themselves.
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In 2004, the short film of Snake Feed and the story of Irene and Rick became the basis of Debra Granik's first feature-length film, Down to the Bone, which was a fictionalized depiction of their struggles.
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Debra Granik's second feature, 2010's Winter's Bone, was an adaptation by Debra Granik and Rosellini of the 2006 novel by Daniel Woodrell.
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Debra Granik is forced to hunt down her missing drug-dealing father in order to save her family from eviction.
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Debra Granik produced and directed an HBO television pilot called American High Life.
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Debra Granik developed a film adaption of Rule of the Bone, the 1995 novel by Russell Banks, but the project is still in development.
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The film documents Hall's participation in an annual pilgrimage motorcycle ride called "Ride to the Wall" with fellow biker Vietnam vets from all over the country where they ride to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC Debra Granik had met Hall, who had a small role on Winter's Bone, during filming.
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Debra Granik directed the drama Leave No Trace, starring Ben Foster and newcomer Thomasin McKenzie, which was released in 2018, domestically by Bleecker Street and internationally by Sony Worldwide Acquisitions.
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Debra Granik is known for discovering actors like Jennifer Lawrence, Vera Farmiga and Thomasin McKenzie who have gone on to successful careers after early roles in Debra Granik's films.
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Debra Granik is known for using local, non-professional actors in her films.
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Debra Granik has worked with creative partner Anne Rosellini on all of her films.
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Debra Granik has said that she sees a common thread of press coverage describing her as having a "comeback narrative," along with questions about how much time has elapsed between projects, partly due to the relatively low output of films in her career compared to the contemporaries she started out with.
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Debra Granik gave an overview of the challenges involved in doing a film about addiction:.
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Debra Granik cites Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Shane Meadows, the Dardenne brothers, Laurent Cantet, and Abbas Kiarostami as some of her major influences in her directing career.
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Debra Granik takes pride in being her teacher and taking responsibility for her.
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Debra Granik is married to Jonathan Scheuer, who has executive produced her films and is Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.