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Jane Schoenbrun

Jane Flannery Schoenbrun (; born 1987) is an American director, screenwriter, and producer who began working in the film industry in the late 2010s. Prior to their directorial debut in 2018, Schoenbrun produced feature-length fiction films, documentaries, and short films.

Early life

Jane Schoenbrun was born in 1987 to a Jewish family. They were raised in Ardsley, New York. Growing up, they worked at a local movie theater.

Career

Schoenbrun graduated from Boston University's film program in 2009. While in college, they worked as a production assistant on short films by the Safdie brothers. After graduating, Schoenbrun moved to New York and began working as a staffer for the Independent Filmmaker Project. Prior to their career as a director, Schoenbrun wrote a significant number of articles and news pieces for the magazine Filmmaker. In 2014, they were the lead of film partnerships at the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter.

Schoenbrun made their directorial debut in 2018 with the documentary A Self-Induced Hallucination. The film centers the narrative of the fictional horror character and internet phenomenon Slender Man, as told through a found footage compilation of existing YouTube videos. Though it was formerly available to view on Vimeo, the film has since been removed. Schoenbrun has stated that they do not wish to profit from A Self-Induced Hallucination.

Their film We're All Going to the World's Fair premiered during the online 2021 Sundance Film Festival. The film follows the story of a teenage girl named Casey, portrayed by Anna Cobb, who joins an "occult online game". The film was inspired and informed by creepypasta aesthetics and trans perspectives. Critics noted that it paid homage to low-budget horror films such Paranormal Activity. The majority of We're All Going to the World's Fair consists of original footage, with the exception of some online videos posted by content creators previously unrelated to the film.

On October 7, 2021, Deadline reported that Schoenbrun's next feature, I Saw the TV Glow, was in development. The film would be co-produced by Fruit Tree, the production banner of actress Emma Stone, as well as A24, which would also distribute the film. Starring Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine, I Saw the TV Glow follows two teenage outcasts who bond over their shared love for a science fiction television series, only for them to lose touch with reality upon the show's cancellation. The film premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival before screening at the Berlin International Film Festival and the South by Southwest Film Festival. I Saw the TV Glow was released in select theaters on May 3, 2024, before a wide release on May 17. The film has received critical acclaim.

In January 2023, The Film Stage announced that Schoenbrun was set to direct an adaptation of Imogen Binnie's 2013 novel Nevada, which is widely considered a classic of transgender literature. However, Schoenbrun confirmed in a May 2024 interview with The Cut that they had exited the project due to "creative differences with cis people". In a June 2024 profile that appeared in the New Yorker, Schoenbrun revealed that their next film would be a slasher called Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. According to Schoenbrun, the film will follow a queer director who, while shooting a new installment of a popular horror franchise, becomes obsessed with the process of casting the movie's "final girl" character.

Schoenbrun is also currently working on a trilogy of novels entitled Public Access Afterworld, which will be published by Hogarth Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House. The novels are reportedly a combination of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and coming-of-age literature. According to Schoenbrun, Public Access Afterworld will serve as the conclusion to a thematically-linked trilogy of works that includes We're All Going to the World's Fair and I Saw the TV Glow. Schoenbrun described the books as "my Dune. It's my epic and me trying to do Buffy, Lost, or Harry Potter. I've created this huge mythology about a giant cast of characters with a story that spans centuries and sprawls across alternate universes. It's got a scope that a 90-minute film couldn't hold, and it's about transition, becoming, and truly closing that gap between self and screen until you feel like you're approximating some form of real life." The project was initially pitched as a television show.

Personal life

Schoenbrun is transfeminine and non-binary. "I don’t think my relationship to gender is something that I completely understand. It’s actually quite comforting to embrace incoherence," they explained in a May 2024 Vanity Fair interview. They discovered they were trans during a mushroom trip that occurred in April 2019, while in the process of writing We're All Going to the World's Fair. They subsequently came out after the project wrapped in 2020; one of Schoenbrun's long-term partners, who was the first person to suggest they were trans, is thanked in the credits of the film. They are also polyamorous.

Gender identity and dysphoria are prominent themes in Schoenbrun's work. They have frequently described I Saw the TV Glow as a film about the "egg crack", a term for the moment in a trans person's life when they realize their identity does not correspond to their assigned gender. Additionally, Schoenbrun has described the presence of screens, which are frequently featured in their work, as "a metaphor for the ways in which we don't experience ourselves when we're going through dysphoria and coming to terms with transness".

With the exception of their mother, Schoenbrun is estranged from their immediate family. They are an anti-capitalist.