Jane Schoenbrun

Jane Flannery Schoenbrun (/ˈʃoʊnbrən/;^[1] born February 5, 1987^[2]) is an American filmmaker. They^[a] worked as a producer before making their directorial debut in 2018.

Jane Flannery Schoenbrun^[3] was born to Jewish parents in Queens, New York, in 1987.^[4][5] They were raised in Ardsley, New York.^[6] They are the eldest of three siblings.^[7]

Schoenbrun was a horror fan as a child; in 5th grade they spent a month watching the entire Nightmare on Elm Street series.^[7] Growing up, they worked at a local movie theater.^[8] Schoenbrun has mentioned being a fan of The Critic at age 8 and looking forward to Saturday night Nickelodeon every week, which they described as an escape from everyday life.^[9] They have said that they were invested emotionally in fictional relationships more than in real relationships.^[10]

At the age of 13, Schoenbrun frequented online message boards, including forums dedicated to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, and various bands. Fake spoilers they wrote for Buffy were spread around the Internet as if they were authentic.^[10] They wrote fan fiction and spent a lot of time participating in online fan communities. Schoenbrun attributes this experience as informing the themes and content of their filmmaking.^[11]

Schoenbrun has described themselves as a trans and queer child who did not yet have the language to understand their identity while growing up.^[12] Growing up in a largely monocultural suburb in the 1990s, they found emotional safety mainly through television, movies, punk music, and online communities.^[12] During high school, they attended DIY and basement punk shows and made amateur horror films with friends.^[13]

They graduated from Boston University in 2009, receiving a bachelor's degree in film.^[14][15]

While in college, Schoenbrun worked as a production assistant on short films by the Safdie brothers.^[14] After graduating, they moved back to New York and began working for the Independent Filmmaker Project.^[14] From 2011 to 2019, they wrote articles for Filmmaker magazine.^[16] In 2014, they served as the lead of film partnerships at Kickstarter.^[17]

Schoenbrun was a founding programmer of the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation. They also contributed to the programming at Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn, as well as curating special screenings for other independent film organizations.^[18]

Schoenbrun made their directorial debut in 2018 with the documentary A Self-Induced Hallucination. The original upload of the documentary was on Vimeo on June 18, 2018.^[19] The documentary remained uploaded on the platform for several months before being taken down for unknown reasons. The film centers the fictional creepypasta Slender Man, being composed entirely of a compilation of found footage-style community-made videos that existed on YouTube prior to the documentary's creation. The documentary was inspired by other Slender Man videos, demonstrating how user-generated videos can create online communities and shared lore.^[20] Schoenbrun has compared the film to a "work of theological inquiry."^[21] Schoenbrun has stated that they do not wish to profit from A Self-Induced Hallucination.^[11]

Their film We're All Going to the World's Fair premiered during the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. The film follows the story of a teenage girl named Casey, portrayed by Anna Cobb, who joins an "occult online game"^[22] and comes under the eye of a middle-aged man named JLB who expresses the desire to protect Casey from the ill effects of the game. Critical reception of the film included speculation on the nature of the relationship as predatory, though some critics note that nothing in the film explicitly supports this idea.^[20][23] The film was inspired by creepypasta aesthetics,^[23] similar to those found in A Self-Induced Hallucination. It is possible that We're All Going to the World's Fair was partially inspired by Schoenbrun's experience making A Self-Induced Hallucination, with Schoenbrun stating that they "fell down the rabbit hole", and were "fascinated by the agreed-upon premise [...] that contributors would never break character,"^[21] an idea that is directly reflected in We're All Going to the World's Fair. In an interview, Schoenbrun shared personal stories of their own life that are similar to plot points within We're All Going to the World's Fair.^[14] Schoenbrun has stated that We're All Going to the World's Fair attempts to "use the language of cinema to articulate the hard-to-describe feeling of dysphoria,"^[23] through its in-universe videos of participants of the World's Fair challenge experiencing unusual bodily symptoms.^[23] The film shares themes with A Self-Induced Hallucination and I Saw The TV Glow, such as trans community formation through shared interests in media,^[20][24] "self-annihilation" through media,^[24] and the blurring of reality and media.^[23][24][25] Critics noted that it paid homage to low-budget horror films such as Paranormal Activity.^[26]

On October 7, 2021, Deadline reported that Schoenbrun's next feature, I Saw the TV Glow, was in development. The film was co-produced by Fruit Tree and A24, the latter of which would also distribute the film.^[27] Starring Justice Smith and Jack Haven,^[b] I Saw the TV Glow follows two teenage outcasts who bond over their shared love for a paranormal television series, only for them to lose touch with reality upon the show's cancellation.^[28] Schoenbrun has described a recurring childhood dream involving "the field behind the field" near their high school that served as a visual and thematic influence on the film's atmosphere and tone.^[29] Schoenbrun began writing the script for this film while they were about two months into hormone replacement therapy. They have stated that they view Justice Smith and Jack Haven's characters as being different sides of themself during the transition process.^[30] The film premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival before screening at the Berlin International Film Festival and the South by Southwest Film Festival.^[31][32][33] I Saw the TV Glow was released in select theaters on May 3, 2024, before a wide release on May 17.^[34] The film was "hailed as an acutely intense psychodrama of self discovery."^[8]

In January 2023, The Film Stage announced that Schoenbrun was set to direct an adaptation of Imogen Binnie's 2013 novel Nevada, which is widely considered a classic of transgender literature.^[35] However, Schoenbrun confirmed in a May 2024 interview with The Cut that they had exited the project due to "creative differences with cis people."^[6]

In a June 2024 in The New Yorker, Schoenbrun revealed that their next film would be a slasher called Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.^[4][36] According to Schoenbrun, the film will follow a queer director who, while shooting a new installment of a popular horror franchise, becomes obsessed with casting the actress who played the "final girl" character in the original movie.^[4] The film was produced by Mubi and Plan B Entertainment. Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson are starring in the film.^[36] On June 17, 2025, Schoenbrun announced on Twitter that the filming for Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma has finished.^[37]

Schoenbrun is also working on a trilogy of novels called Public Access Afterworld, which will be published by Penguin Random House's imprint Hogarth Books.^[38] The novels are a combination of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and coming-of-age literature. According to Schoenbrun, Public Access Afterworld will serve as the conclusion to a thematically-linked trilogy of works that includes We're All Going to the World's Fair and I Saw the TV Glow. Schoenbrun described the books as having a "huge mythology about a giant cast of characters with a story that spans centuries and sprawls across alternate universes. It's got a scope that a 90-minute film couldn't hold, and it's about transition, becoming, and truly closing that gap between self and screen until you feel like you're approximating some form of real life."^[39] The project was initially pitched as a television show.^[40]

On October 23, 2025, Deadline reported that Netflix ordered a straight-to-series adaptation of Charles Burns' graphic novel Black Hole, with Schoenbrun writing and directing. New Regency will serve as the co-studio alongside Netflix. Executive producers on the series include Plan B, Erin Levy, Charles Burns, Yariv Milchan, Arnon Milchan, Natalie Lehmann, and Laura Delahaye. Set in the 1970s, the novel follows teenagers in Seattle who contract a mysterious sexually transmitted infection known as "the Bug" which causes them to develop bizarre physical mutations.^[41]

Schoenbrun's work frequently explores themes of dysphoria, mediated identity, and blurring the line between reality and fantasy. They have described these frequent themes as central to their art, often drawing from experience they encountered in online spaces and from unarticulated feelings regarding their queer identity that they did not have the words for at the time.^[42][10]

Schoenbrun has discussed how these internet communities helped inform their thematic approach to A Self Induced Hallucination and later projects, specifically their interest in participatory digital storytelling and boundaries between online identity and fantasy.^[43][7]

Gender identity and dysphoria are prominent themes in Schoenbrun's work.^[44] They have frequently described I Saw the TV Glow as a film about the "egg crack", a term for the moment in a trans person's life when they realize their identity does not correspond to their assigned gender.^[45][46][47] Schoenbrun and critics alike have written of how the representations of trans characters and trans-adjacent characters within their filmography are for trans people, and are coded in ways that do not make it explicit for audiences who are unfamiliar with transness or are not trans themselves.^[23][25] Schoenbrun has described the presence of screens, which are frequently featured in their work, as "a metaphor for the ways in which we don't experience ourselves when we're going through dysphoria and coming to terms with transness."^[48] Critics have compared Schoenbrun's work to that of David Cronenberg and Kiyoshi Kurosawa in dealing with interactions between the human body and technology.^[23]

Schoenbrun is transfeminine and non-binary.^[49][44] They realized they were trans while on mushrooms in April 2019, during the process of writing We're All Going to the World's Fair.^[14][49] They subsequently came out after the project wrapped in 2020; one of Schoenbrun's long-term partners, who was the first person to suggest they were trans, is thanked in the credits of the film.^[49] Schoenbrun has described their gender and queer identity as something they were unable to fully understand or articulate while growing up. They have talked about how media such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other television programs served as an emotional outlet where they found their identity.^[42][10]

Schoenbrun married Melissa Ader in 2014.^[4] The two met in high school.^[14]

With the exception of their mother, they are estranged from their immediate family.^[47] They are polyamorous^[49] and have three partners.^[50] They also identify as an anti-capitalist^[4] and have spoken out against Zionism and the Israeli genocide of Palestinians,^[51] including pledging to Film Workers for Palestine.^[52] As of 2024, they maintain residences in Brooklyn and Chatham, New York.^[4]

Miscellaneous

Producer and/or writer only

• Jane Schoenbrun at IMDb 
• Jane Schoenbrun at Rotten Tomatoes