Lauren Wolkstein

Lauren Wolkstein is an American queer filmmaker, raised in Baltimore and trained at Duke University and, with an MFA in directing, at Columbia University, where her thesis short Cigarette Candy won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Short at SXSW in 2010. She is known for The Strange Ones (2017), which she co-directed and co-wrote with Christopher Radcliff -- a haunting film, expanded from their 2011 short of the same name, about a young man traveling with an older man who may or may not be his brother, with unresolved questions about sexuality and desire embedded in its unsettling atmosphere. The feature premiered at SXSW and was named one of John Waters's favorite films of the year. Her other shorts include Social Butterfly, which premiered at Sundance in 2013, the same year Filmmaker magazine named her one of its "25 New Faces of Independent Film."