Susan Sandler

Susan Sandler is a writer/director, producer, playwright, teacher, and mentor. Her screenplays include the Golden Globe nominated “Crossing Delancey”, “Friends At Last” as well as projects for Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, Disney, TNT, Columbia Pictures, Jersey Films and Interscope.  She directed and produced the documentary feature “Julia Scotti: Funny That Way” www.juliascottifilm.com winner of Audience Choice at the Paley Center for New Media Doc Pitch, released by 1091 Pictures streaming on major digital platforms and distributed internationally by Good Docs. Her latest project, “The Artist Must Grow Ever More Selfish” a portrait of Pulitzer Prize winning composer and gay icon Ned Rorem in his 1950’s Paris, is currently on the international festival circuit and screening with live concerts of his music.

Sandler’s work for the stage has been produced in New York, at major theaters across the country, and around the world. Her plays include “Crossing Delancey”, Under the Bed”, “The Renovation”, “The Moaner”, “If I Were A Train”, “Hokey-Pokey”, “The Find”, “The Burial Society”, “The Lovely Just So”, and “Kinfolks and Mountain Music”. She is a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre, the HB Playwrights Foundation, The Playwrights Round Table of the Actors Studio, and the Writers Guild of America. Sandler’s work is published by Smith and Kraus, Vintage Press, and Samuel French Publishers.  Her plays have also been produced for “Playing on Air: Great American Short Plays with Great American Actors” on NPR.

Susan teaches screenwriting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in The Kanbar Institute of Film and Television, where she has developed new courses in the undergraduate department, including Adaptation Screenwriting Workshop and a yearlong workshop in creating original feature screenplays. Along with her teaching, she has passionately guided the student run Fusion Film Festival since its inception in 2003, celebrating the work of women and nonbinary artists behind the camera, and mentoring the next generation of change-makers in film, television, and new media. www.fusionfilmfestival.com

Education

Boston University, Virginia Commonwealth University, BFA