Irene Taylor is a renowned director and producer with an impressive array of accolades to her name. Her most recent film, Trees And Other Entanglements, was released by HBO in 2023 and delves into humanity's fascination with the natural world.
In 2022, Irene received a Columbia-duPont Award for her thought-provoking investigation into the Boy Scouts of America, Leave No Trace: A Hidden History of The Boy Scouts, which premiered on Hulu.
Her 2019 documentary, Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements, premiered at Sundance and garnered a Special Merit nomination in Documentary Filmmaking at the 2020 Primetime Emmy Awards. The film is a deeply personal exploration of Irene's experiences as a mother of a deaf son and her own deafness, as well as the story of Ludwig Van Beethoven's struggles with deafness.
Irene began her career in photojournalism, which led to her first feature documentary, Hear and Now, a memoir about her deaf parents. The film won the Audience Award at Sundance in 2007, a Peabody Award, and numerous accolades at film festivals worldwide. It also received a nomination for Documentary of the Year from the Producers Guild of America in 2008.
Her subsequent documentary, Beware the Slenderman, a true-crime story about two adolescent girls obsessed with an internet bogeyman, earned Irene nominations for an Emmy Award and two Critics' Choice Awards for Best Director and Best Documentary.
Irene's additional credits include several short films released by HBO, including The Final Inch, which was nominated for an Academy Award and multiple Emmys, and won the IDA's Pare Lorentz Award. She also directed Saving Pelican 895, which won an Emmy Award for its affecting music, and One Last Hug: Three Days At Grief Camp, which won the 2014 Prime Time Emmy for Best Children's Programming.
Irene's work has also been featured in The New York Times Op-Docs, where she released the short film Between Sound and Silence, an exploration of the impact of hearing technology on human experience.
Prior to her career in documentary filmmaking, Irene worked as a Himalayan Mountain guide and author, and her book of photographic essays, Buddhas in Disguise, became the basis for her first documentary film, made in collaboration with UNICEF in 1993. Irene graduated from New York University and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, and was a producer for CBS Sunday Morning from 1998-2001. She founded Vermilion Films in 2006 and is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and The Television Academy. Irene currently resides in Portland, Oregon.
