Lisa Cholodenko

Lisa Cholodenko is an American lesbian filmmaker, raised in California's San Fernando Valley, who earned a BA in anthropology from San Francisco State before working as an assistant editor on Boyz n the Hood and To Die For and completing an MFA in directing at Columbia. She is known for High Art (1998), a drug-saturated film about desire and ambition in the New York photography world; Laurel Canyon (2002), which premiered at Cannes; and The Kids Are All Right (2010), which earned Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay and starred Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a lesbian couple whose children seek out their sperm donor. Cholodenko drew on her own experience as a lesbian mother for the film. She also directed the celebrated miniseries Olive Kitteredge (2014, multiple Emmy Awards). She has been openly lesbian throughout her career.