Brooke Berman

Profile

Brooke Berman is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, and memoirist whose work has been produced and published across the US and abroad. Originally trained as an actor and solo performer in the experimental theater, Brooke began performing her own work on the Lower East Side of Manhattan before receiving formal training in playwriting from the Juilliard School. Her play Hunting and Gathering, which premiered at Primary Stages, directed by Leigh Silverman, was named one of the Ten Best of that year by New York Magazine. She has just completed her debut feature as a writer/director, RAMONA AT MIDLIFE. RAMONA was a 2021 selection (Best Unproduced Script) at the Montreal Independent Film Festival, the Toronto Independent Women’s Film Festival and LA Indies and had its world premiere at Geena Davis’s esteemed Bentonville Film Festival in 2023. Ramona is gearing up to screen at The Woodstock Film Festival, Mystic Film Festival and Heartland Film Festival.

Brooke wrote and directed the short film, UGGS FOR GAZA which premiered at the Aspen International ShortsFest where it won Audience Special Recognition award. UGGS also screened at Toronto Shorts Fest and Santa Fe Film Festival. ALL SAINTS DAY, a short film Brooke wrote, directed by Will Frears, won Best Narrative Short at the Savannah Film Festival and played at the Tribeca Film Festival. She adapted her play SMASHING for Natalie Portman and has written features for The Mark Gordon Company, Vox Films, Red Crown, and Fugitive Films. Brooke’s feature script POLLY FREED was developed through New York Stage and Film’s Screenwriters Lab where it was mentored by Kyra Sedgewick, Zach Helm and Billy Goldberg and selected as part the MOME (Mayor’s Office of NYC) inaugural finance lab for female filmmakers and NYWIFT From Script to Preproduction lab.

PF has made it to “second round” for Sundance Screenwriting Labs two years in a row and won Best Screenplay at the Toronto Independent Film Festival in 2020.