Vanessa Block | |
---|---|
Alma mater | |
Occupations |
|
Years active | 2015–present |
Vanessa Block is an American film director and producer who wrote the story for 2021 film Pig with Michael Sarnoski and was one of the film's producers. [1] Prior to Pig, she directed the short documentary The Testimony , which was one of the 10 short-listed considerations for five available nominations for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film. [2]
Block went to Yale University and pursued a degree in chemistry, and also enrolled in the pre-medical track, to become a physician. She enjoyed writing screenplays as a hobby and met Sarnoski who was producing a zombie-themed short film. Block went on to Keck School of Medicine of USC to pursue a master's degree in global medicine and became motivated to make a documentary about sexual violence in the Congo. She wrote, produced, and edited The Testimony, and Sarnoski helped as editor and executive producer. After The Testimony, she launched the BlockBox Entertainment banner, under which Pig was produced. [3] She wrote the story for Pig with Sarnoski, who then wrote the screenplay and directed the film. [1]
Year | Title | Medium | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2015 | The Testimony | Short documentary | Wrote, produced, directed |
2021 | Pig | Feature film | Story credit with Michael Sarnoski; producer |
Vanessa Block received several awards and nominations for the 2021 film Pig .
Award | Ceremony | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|
Austin Film Critics Association Award for Best Original Screenplay with Michael Sarnoski | 2021 ceremony | Won | |
Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Feature with Michael Sarnoski, et al. | 2021 ceremony | Nominated | |
Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay with Michael Sarnoski | 37th ceremony | Won | |
Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Original Screenplay with Michael Sarnoski | 2021 ceremony | Won |
Nicolas Kim Coppola, known professionally as Nicolas Cage, is an American actor and film producer. He is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for two BAFTA Awards. Known for his versatility as an actor, his participation in various film genres has gained him a cult following.
George Miller is an Australian filmmaker. Over the course of four decades he has received critical and popular success creating the Mad Max franchise starting in 1979 with two of the films having been hailed as two of the greatest action films of all time. He has also earned numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and a Golden Globe Award.
Mark Jonathan Harris is an American documentary filmmaker, writer, and educator known for his award-winning work in the documentary genre. Over the course of his career, Harris has earned three Academy Awards and numerous accolades for his contributions to filmmaking and education. He served as a Distinguished Professor and Head of Advanced Documentary Production at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where he taught from 1983 until his retirement in 2023. Harris is also an accomplished author, having written five children's novels and a collection of short stories.
Richard Stanley is a South African filmmaker, known for his work in the horror genre. He began his career making short films and music videos, and subsequently directed the feature films Hardware (1990) and Dust Devil (1992), both of which are considered cult classics. He was the original director of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), but was fired early into principal photography due to creative differences, an episode recounted in the 2014 documentary Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau. In 2019, he returned to feature films after more than 20 years, directing the H. P. Lovecraft adaptation Color Out of Space.
Jim Sheridan is an Irish playwright and filmmaker. Between 1989 and 1993, Sheridan directed three critically acclaimed films set in Ireland, My Left Foot (1989), The Field (1990), and In the Name of the Father (1993), and later directed the films The Boxer (1997), In America (2003), and Brothers (2009). Sheridan has received six Academy Award nominations for his work.
James Francis Ivory is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He was a principal in Merchant Ivory Productions along with Indian film producer Ismail Merchant and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The trio is known for making film adaptations of stories by authors such as E.M. Forster and Henry James. Their body of work is celebrated for its elegance, sophistication, literary fidelity, strong performances, complex themes, and rich characters.
Grant Heslov is an American actor and filmmaker known for his producing and writing collaborations with George Clooney, which have earned him four Oscar nominations. As a co-producer of Argo (2012), he received the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2013. As an actor, he has appeared in films including True Lies (1994), Black Sheep (1996), Enemy of the State (1998), and The Scorpion King (2002), as well as performing supporting roles in several films made with Clooney.
Raoul Peck is a Haitian filmmaker of both documentary and feature films. He is known for using historical, political, and personal characters to tackle and recount societal issues and historical events. Peck was Haiti's Minister of Culture from 1996 to September 1997. His film I Am Not Your Negro (2016), about the life of James Baldwin and race relations in the United States, was nominated for an Oscar in January 2017 and won a César Award in France. Peck's HBO documentary miniseries, Exterminate All the Brutes (2021), received a Peabody Award.
Stuart Hazeldine is a British screenwriter, film producer and director. He is best known for his 2009 psychological thriller Exam, for which he was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer. He also directed the 2017 film adaptation of William P. Young's novel The Shack. He currently resides in London.
John Orloff is an American screenwriter, television creator, and producer.
Lucía Puenzo is an Argentine author, screenwriter and film director. She is the daughter of the Oscar-winning film director, producer, and screenplay writer, Luis Puenzo.
Mitchell W. Block was an American filmmaker, primarily a producer of documentary films.
The Testimony is a 2015 American short documentary film about the "Minova Trial", conducted in 2014 by the army of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to prosecute government troops' rapes and atrocities committed against women in Minova in 2012. It was the largest rape trial in DRC history.
Barry Jenkins is an American filmmaker. After making his filmmaking debut with the short film My Josephine (2003), he directed his first feature film Medicine for Melancholy (2008) for which he received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Feature. He is also a member of The Chopstars collective as a creative collaborator.
Roopa Rao is an independent Indian film-maker from Bangalore. She is the writer and director of India's first same-sex love story web series, The Other Love Story (2016). Rao is also known for directing critically acclaimed award-winning Kannada film Gantumoote (2019).
Ari Aster is an American filmmaker. After garnering initial recognition for the short film The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011), he became best known for writing and directing Hereditary (2018), Midsommar (2019), and Beau Is Afraid (2023), all of which were released by A24. His films have been noted for their unsettling combination of horror, dark comedy, and depictions of graphic violence. He co-founded the production company Square Peg with Danish producer Lars Knudsen in 2018.
Pig is a 2021 American drama film written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, from a story by Vanessa Block and Sarnoski. The film stars Nicolas Cage as a truffle-hunter who lives alone in the Oregon wilderness and must return to his past in Portland in search of his beloved foraging pig after she is kidnapped. It also stars Alex Wolff and Adam Arkin.
A Quiet Place: Day One is a 2024 American apocalyptic horror film written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, based on a story he conceived with John Krasinski. It is the third installment in the A Quiet Place film series, serving as a spin-off and prequel. The film stars Lupita Nyong'o as a terminally ill woman during the early stages of an invasion in New York City by blind, extraterrestrial creatures with an acute sense of hearing. The supporting cast includes Joseph Quinn and Djimon Hounsou, who reprises his role from A Quiet Place Part II.
Michael Sarnoski is an American filmmaker, who wrote and directed the films Pig (2021) and A Quiet Place: Day One (2024). For Pig, he received numerous awards and nominations.
Yann Gozlan is a French film director and screenwriter. He has directed five feature films: the horror film Caged (2010), the thriller A Perfect Man (2015), the action thriller Burn Out (2017), the mystery thriller Black Box (2021), and the psychological thriller Visions (2023).