One of Filmmaker Magazine’s ’25 New Faces of Independent Film,’ and a fellow of IFP’s 2011 Emerging Visions symposium, Danielle Lurie is a New York City based filmmaker and photographer. She has been shooting films and photos since graduating from Stanford University in 2000 with a BA in Philosophy.
Danielle’s debut short film, In the Morning, premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, has screened at over thirty-five film festivals, winning six including ‘Best Narrative Short’ at the Oscar qualifying Nashville Film Festival. In November 2005, In The Morning was invited to screen before the U.S. Congress at the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on Honor Killings, and later screened before UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women). Danielle next made the short impromptu documentary 81-Year-Old Sweethearts, about an 81-year-old man she randomly met on a plane who was flying across the country to re-meet his high school sweetheart after 62 years. This film has been featured on acclaimed sites such as The Huffington Post and has gotten almost 600,000 views on Vimeo and YouTube combined.
Danielle has also filmed a documentary in Uganda where she lived in an IDP (Internally Displaced People) Camp and a feature length documentary following Sheryl Crow’s Global Warming tour through the deep south, produced by Laurie David (An Inconvenient Truth). On the narrative side, Danielle has written screenplay adaptations of Jamaica Kincaid’s novel, Lucy, to star Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Star Trek) as well as an excerpt of Nicholas Kristof’s best selling book, Half the Sky, directed by Marisa Tomei and Lisa Leone, for a PBS series. She has also been one of the screenwriters on the adaptation of the best selling book, Sold, by Zana Muhsen.
Danielle’s most recent short film, Tiny Miny Magic, is a whimsical tale of a love story gone postal, starring Jennifer Lafleur and Ross Partridge. Danielle is currently adapting another Nicholas Kristof NY Times article into a full-length film about an Indian female vigilante titled Usha, set in the slums of India. Danielle is currently also in development on the feature-length version of In the Morning, titled Fortunate Sons, that will co-star Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves, Punch Drunk Love).