BIO
Award-winning filmmaker and scientist, Valerie Weiss, has directed four feature films including the recently wrapped Mixtape for Netflix starring Gemma Allen and Julie Bowen. She has also directed twenty episodes of television including three episodes of Outer Banks (Netflix), an episode of Why Women Kill (CBS All Access), Maryellen: An American Girl Special (Amazon), multiple episodes for Dick Wolf Productions (NBC), Shondaland (ABC), and the mid-season finale of Berlanti’s Prodigal Son (Fox).
With a Ph.D. in X-ray Crystallography from Harvard University, Valerie has spent her career both as a scientist and a filmmaker transforming abstract material into compelling visual stories. Her work has been called "daringly light" for the way it embraces controversial topics in an enchanting way and spans the genres of action, thriller, drama, sci-fi and comedy. RogerEbert.com calls her second feature, A Light Beneath Their Feet, “Emotionally raw and uncommonly observant...By turns endearing, unsettling, and ultimately moving, [it] is a triumph of empathetic filmmaking." Valerie’s third feature, The Archer, premiered at SXSW in 2017 is a feminist coming-of-age action film best described as Thelma and Louise meets First Blood.
Valerie is a member of the Directors Guild of America, an alumnus of the AFI Directing Workshop for Women (DWW) Program. She participated in the WeForShe DirectHer Program, and the DGA Director Development Initiative (DDI). In 2018, Valerie won the top honor in the Fox Filmmaking Lab and was commissioned to direct a short film based on her pitch of a female-centric sequel in the Maze Runner franchise called True Maze. She is a mother of two tween girls and a goldendoodle. She and her husband, Rob Johnson, live in the View Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. She is repped by CAA, John Bauman Management and Ziffren Brittenham LLP.