Joe Brewster Filmmaker

Joe Brewster is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker who believes in the healing power of stories. Drawing on his experience as a prison psychiatrist, he made his directorial debut at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival with The Keeper, nominated at the 12th Spirit Awards. Over three decades, Brewster has created genre-bending works that fuse fiction, immersive, experimental, and hybrid forms to center the lived experiences of the Black diaspora. His documentary American Promise (2014) earned three Emmy nominations and the Sundance Jury Prize. His recent films, Black Girls Play, received the Edward R. Murrow Award, and Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project won the Emmy for Outstanding Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. His VR project The Changing Same won the 2021 Tribeca Grand Prize. Brewster has produced for PBS, HBO, Amazon, and Disney and is a Guggenheim Fellow and Academy member.