Irene is an Oscar-nominated, Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker whose documentaries have shown theatrically, at film festivals and on television worldwide. Her first feature film, Hear and Now, a documentary memoir about her deaf parents, won the Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival in 2007, and went on to win numerous Jury and Audience awards around the world, a 2008 Peabody Award, and a nomination for Documentary of the Year by the Producer’s Guild of America. Her next film, The Final Inch, a short film about the global effort to eradicate polio, was nominated for an Academy award, multiple Emmys, and won the IDA’s Pare Lorentz Award. After the 2010 Gulf oil spill, Irene followed the life of a single bird found coated in oil, and with HBO made Saving Pelican 895 which won an Emmy for its affecting music. In 2014, she directed One Last Hug: Three Days at Grief Camp, which won the 2014 Prime Time Emmy for Best Childrens Programming. In 2016 she released with HBO Beware the Slenderman, a haunting exploration of an internet Bogeyman and two 12-year-old girls who attempted to kill for him and Open Your Eyes, her short film following one Nepali family’s struggle to regain their sight.
Irene has also worked as a journalist with CBS News, made numerous television documentaries, and for 10 years worked as a Himalayan mountain guide. She is a graduate of New York University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She founded Vermilion Films in 2006.
Winning Project: Beware The Slenderman