Series

Girls to the Front! The Cinema of Jennifer Reeder

Writer, director, and producer Jennifer Reeder has earned comparisons to other filmmakers: the surrealism of Lynch, the camp of Waters, the pop-culture sensibility of Spheeris, the stylistic experimentation of Deren. While her influences are varied, Reeder is a singular filmmaker all her own. A Midwest native, Reeder discovered filmmaking at Ohio State University and later earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her thesis film, White Trash Girl, went on to be featured at the Whitney Museum of American Art, helping to jumpstart Reeder’s professional career. A prolific creator of short and feature films, Reeder has distinguished her work through its clear directorial voice, vibrant pop culture-inflected aesthetic, genre-bending form and narrative, and a laser focus on the myth, reality, and liminality of girl- and womanhood in the contemporary United States.  

Her films have premiered and screened at prestigious global festivals including Sundance, Berlin, Rotterdam, SXSW, Tribeca, BFI-London Film Festival, The Whitney Biennial, and the Venice Biennale.  She received the 2024 Tour De Force Award from the Chicago International Film Festival and in 2020 was named by Oscar-winner Bong Joon-ho as a filmmaker pivotal to the future of cinema, an elite group that also includes Chloe Zhao, Ari Aster, Mati Diop, Jordan Peele, and Bi Gan. 

Invested in the next generation of talent, she’s produced over a dozen short films for Indigenous, trans, and queer filmmakers, and served as an advisor at the Sundance Indigenous Program and the Sundance Ignite Program.  Reeder is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including the USA Fellowship, the Alpert Film Award residency at MacDowell Colony, a Creative Capital Grant, and the SFFIM/Rainin Foundation award.